Diary of a Brassica Butterfly

Watch our voice thread show to learn about the life cycle of a Brassica Butterfly and to learn how they depend on the Wisconsin Fast Plant.

Butterflies on Tuesday?

Our Brassica are now in chrysalis form. We wouldn't be surprised to find a few butterflies flying around the pavilion tomorrow morning. Hopefully the fast plants speed up so that there are some flowers for the butterflies to find nectar!

Fast Plants and Butterflies

Our Fast Plant seeds arrived last Friday, and by Monday they had sprouted! Today, they are the habitat for our Brassicca Butterfly eggs.

Our week in review:

1. We made Mexican butter cookies (Polvorones). It was fun to make them.

2. It was hard to cream the butter with a fork and then to mix the flour with it.

3. I liked our day in Mexico.

4. I liked the cookies that we made. They had a lot of cinnamon. My dad liked them too.

5. The eggs arrived. They look like crumbs! They're yellowish greenish and only a millimeter long!

6. I learned how to add money amounts into a calculator.

7. We learned about Fast Plants.

8. I learned in P.E. that jumping above balls is easy if you pay attention.

9. My favorite part was when we got to taste the cookies. I was proud of how they tasted.

10. I am proud of planting the Fast Plants seeds. I've never planted before. I was happy to see them grow.

11. I'm excited that the bulletin board is empty, because that means we're starting a new unit!

12. There's a caterpillar on a leaf! It's the same color as the eggs!

13. I learned that caterpillars like eating leaves.

14. Seeds sprout into seedlings.

15. I shared about winning an award for horseback riding.

Ghana to Mexico

We are preparing for our trip to Mexico. Yes, we just returned from Ghana and are now setting off on another adventure. Our last days in Ghana were spent celebrating our learning. We listened to Ghanaian music from the 70s (a time when tradition and culture was mixed with new sounds) and made our own Adinkra cloths. Although we will miss Ghana, we look forward to exploring Mexico!

Our Week in Review

* My favorite part of the week was getting to chop down "cocoa beans."

* Cocoa beans are 8-15 inches long!

* We learned about "Fair Trade."

* I learned that Ghanaians can use coconut husks to build roofs.

* Ghanaians use long poles to harvest cocoa beans.

* Yams, rice, millet, cassava, tuna, sardines, prawns, plantains, and may other foods are eaten in Ghana.

* I am moving up on my mad minutes.

* Yams are a root.

* Tuna is great in soup!

* We're almost done with our moon books!

* 1 centimeter = 1/100 of a meter.

* 1 decimeter = 1/10 of a meter.

Ghana and Back

Quite a busy day! So busy, the children didn't get a chance to share their thoughts about the week.

Ask your child about our flight to Accra, Ghana. We flew 5,600 miles over the Atlantic to the African country near the Equator. Needless to say, we had time to watch an in-flight movie. The movie toured the coastal plains, rain forest, Lake Volta, and Savanna. We realized that we were overdressed, but we were happy that we packed shorts, sun glasses, and hats. We experienced quite an adventure AND made it back to school in time for the 3:00 bell!

Week in Review

I learned:

* If there's something lost, you can make a new one.

* If you add the middle number to the answer and you get the top number, your answer's right! (Trade-First Subtraction)

* Anansi stories come from Ghana.

* Ghana is close to the Equator.

* Ghana is in Africa.

* When people started getting into a fight, I started to say, "Stop fighting. We can redo it."

* A leader is someone that listens to others' ideas, not just follows their own ideas. A leader makes decisions after hearing all ideas. A leader lets everyone have a little bit of something that they want.

* It's easier to do problems when you memorize facts.

* Ghana is really close to the equator. It's north of it.

* It's fun to measure things you do (how far you can jump).

* It was fun finding the median jumping length.

* In Ghana children can eat from a shared bowl of food.

* Ghana is in Africa.

* Ghana is way smaller than the U.S.

* Ghana is a country.

Birds or Squirrels?

Our bread valentines for the birds were a hit! Only red yarn strings are left dangling from the tree. The class wonders if the birds were able to get to them before the squirrels...

(pictures to come)

Our week in review:

*We wrote our Moon books chapter by chapter.

*We solved a month mystery. It was March!

*I'm playing on ZASP's basketball league. I finally learned how to dribble. I'm excited for next week's game!

*I learned how to make an eclipse of the Moon.

*The Sun spins.

*I liked when we were trying to figure out what month the poem was talking about. It said it can't be July, December, September or October. It was March because it had two seasons and is windy.

*I liked the book The Rough Face Girl.

*I liked the game in PE we played with catchers and throwers.

*I liked finding what month the poem described.

*I liked when we played the game Alibi.

*Basketball addition was fun!

*Math games can be fun. When we don't do it right, it gets kind of boring.

*We made snowflakes in art.

*The Earth goes around the Sun and the Moon goes around the Earth. That's revolving.

*The Moon is Earth's closest neighbor.

A Valentine Mystery

Mrs. G: How did you find your valentine? Why did you search for it during reading time?

Student Answers:

1. We're practicing inferring. We needed to use inferring to help us figure out clues that led to it.
2. We got clues to get our valentine. We had to read the clues and find the next clue.
3. I followed all of the clues and the last clue was, "I have legs but cannot walk." So I looked on my chair.
4. I found it with my group. We solved problems like "You can see through me but can't go
through me." First we thought a mirror, but thought you can see your relfection not through it. SOO we thought it was the window.
5. I used the clues that I had and thought about what things were in the classroom that had to to with the clue.
6. Clue six said it had four legs, so it was the chair.
7. We had to use our reading strategies. It told me it had four legs. Then I realized four legs would have to be a chair. I looked and found it.
8. There were cards. I got one and it lead to the next one. The final one led to where it was.
9. We were detectives.
10. With the clues...
11. I followed the clues.
12. Well I found a clue at my seat and I thought. The clue led me to the Refill Station. I found another clue there that brought me to the Literacy Bins. Then my next clue brought me to the mailboxes. Then it brought me to my seat. I checked under my seat and found your valentine.
13. First our group read your clues and then we thought what part of the room would the clues go with. Then once we found where the clues were, we just tried it. If it didn't work we would just think what else would be a good place that the clues would match.
14. By trying to figure out the clues and looking in different places.
15. We had to use our classroom schema folder.
16. We were following all the clues. I was writing it down. We were reading them. When we got to the last one, we found out what was four legs.
17. Followed clues.

Special Valentines

During reading students have been practicing inferring. They've learned that the reader must use the author's clues as well as background knowledge to understand text. One poem we read described valentines created for special friends (birds). The students used reading strategies to figure out who the valentines were made for and then to create these valentines.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...Blast off!

At the beginning of our Earth, Sun, and Moon unit, students created a view of the Sun and Earth from the Moon. The group that created the Sun used torn construction paper and glued the pieces together to create the fiery illustration. The Moon group used white poster board, markers, and careful cutting to create the moonscape. The Earth group creatively traced our Noise-O-Meter hemisphere (two times) and added splashes of green land. The background group used white chalk on black paper to illustrate the many other objects in space. Astronauts were drawn and cut out by our final group. This group wanted larger figures placed closer up in order to show depth!
The students (and their teachers) are very proud of the outcome of this cooperative project!

Fact Collecting

Here are few more pictures of facts collected during our solar system unit.

February 5, 2010: The beginning...

A colleague turned me on to the idea of communicating classroom activities through a blog. It got me thinking that it would be great for the children to post their ideas about learning experiences. So here is our week in review:
I became a master at Trade-First Subtraction. It's so easy now!
The sun shines on different parts of the moon.
I liked the mad minute!

We are detectives when we read.

Look for more posts with student work.