Living and Nonliving Things

Today we started a new science unit about living and nonliving things.  We will be using a webquest to learn about living and nonliving things.  Through this experience, students will be able to classify living and nonliving things at the beach.

Real World Math

This week we had several parents visit our classes to talk about how they use math in their daily lives!

Mrs. Shipman came to talk to us about how she uses math in her job as a speech language pathologist.  Although math is one of the things that she does not help children with, she uses math to track the progress of her clients, and she also uses math to schedule appointments and for billing purposes.

 Sergeant Marlow shared with us photos and videos of an aircraft that refuels other aircraft midair!  The kids thought this was very cool!

Sergeant Marlow also had the kids calculate how much gas would be needed to refuel different amounts of aircraft.  He was very impressed with our multiplication and division skills!

Mrs. Bowser spoke with us about area and perimeter and how we might use these skills in our lives outside of school.

She also had the kids calculate the area of sod or dirt needed to fill the space inside a little box that she made for each student.  We had a great time learning about area and perimeter!

Thank you to all the parents that have come in to speak with us so far this month!  We look forward to hearing from more parents this week.

The Rock Cycle - Part 2

After creating sedimentary rock by pressing the pieces of sediment together, we wrapped our sedimentary rocks in aluminum foil and applied heat and pressure with our hands.  The heat and pressure changed our sedimentary rocks into metamorphic rocks.

To continue the rock cycle, we applied even more heat (an electric griddle) to our metamorphic rocks to create magma.  Our rocks quickly melted and began to bubble!

Once the magma cooled, we were left with igneous rocks!

The Rock Cycle - Part 1

Today, students in Mrs. Owens' homeroom learned more about the rock cycle with a hands-on activity.  We began by creating sediment out of Starburst candies.  Students cut several Starburst candies into small pieces to form a pile of sediment.

Once we had a nice pile of sediment, we pressed the pieces together.  By adding pressure to the layers of sediment, we created a sedimentary rock.  Real sedimentary rocks are created when layers of soil, rocks, leaves, and other natural materials are pressed together over time.

Stay tuned to see how Mrs. Ekonen's students continue the rock cycle!

Real World Math

Mason's grandfather joined us today to tell us about how he uses math at his business, Bama Painting.  Did you know that it took 8 months to paint our schools at Paine Elementary?  Mr. Holloway uses math in everything that he does, from calculating the square feet of a building to mixing paint colors.  Thank you so much for talking to us today!

Mineral Investigations

We have been learning about rocks and minerals for the past couple of weeks.  Today we performed scratch tests on four different minerals in order to identify which mineral was quartz.  The kids were given two clues: 1) quartz is white and 2) it is the hardest of the four minerals.  The scratch tests were conducted with paper clips, pennies, and fingernails.  By simply scratching the four different minerals, we were able to identify quartz.  Tomorrow we will figure out how to identify gypsum, calcite, and fluorite!

Real World Math!

During the month of October, parents have been invited to come share with us how they use math in their daily lives.  Mrs. Dickey joined us today and shared how she uses math as a real estate agent.  We enjoyed learning about all of the different ways that she uses numbers.  She works with some pretty big numbers, but I think we all have a better understanding of what she does!  Thank you, Mrs. Dickey, for sharing with us today!  We look forward to hearing from other parents as well.  If you haven't signed up for a time yet, please see the email I sent for the SignUpGenius link.