Long Island Children's Museum Field Trip

Here are some pictures from our field trip to the Long Island Children's Museum.  We learned about simple machines and had the opportunity to visit all of the exhibits.  The students built building with blocks, played with bubbles, climbed the hanging "tunnel".  The girls had fun pretending to be news anchors and radio hosts.  Most of my pictures are of one group because the rest were exploring with their parent chaperons.  If anyone has pictures of the rest of our bunch, I would love for you to share.  We had a great day exploring in new ways!

A Lesson in Place Value Takes a Turn

     The other day we started a new unit in math: place value.  At the end of the lesson, we were using base ten blocks and some how we began questioning how many units would it take to cover our classroom floor.  We took our heads out of our books, left our desks and began problem solving.  Students counted the floor tiles and figured how many units it would take to cover one tile.  Very quickly they were able to calculate the area of our classroom in square units.  There were some bumps along the way, and they forgot to take into consideration that our classroom is not a simple rectangle.  The calculations were not perfect, but together we discovered that it would take over 600,000 units to cover our classroom floor!

Students counting floor tiles

Book Buddies Come to 4th Grade

Today our Preschool book buddies visited us upstairs in the 4th grade classroom.  We wanted to share with them some of the technology we use in our classroom.  We used our computer and projector to watch actress Rita Moreno read the story "I Need My Monster" by Amanda Noll.  We used the website www.storyonline.com which features many different stories read by different entertainers.  The preschoolers sat quietly while the story was read and most agreed they liked the girl monster the best.  It was exciting to have them visit us this week, we hope they will have the chance to visit us again soon.

The Love of Reading

     This is what happens to a student who finds a book he loves!  Nothing makes a teacher smile more than when a student finds joy in reading and challenges himself to reach new goals.  Hunter is blazing a trail through the Captain Underpants series.  His goal is reading the entire series by the end of October.  This book he finished in 1 day!  This kid rocks!!!