Weekly Update 4/29/10

Fun With Wheels and Axles!

We haven't even studied pullies yet- but these boys designed one-complete with a counter weight!

Can we move the books without breaking the string?


Let's add some "wheels". Whoah! It's faster than we thought!



Carefully designing a rickshaw using wheels, axles and levers.

Check out the crank I made! See how it spins on its axis?

Here's What's Going on in the Beacons' World:

Reading: As a class, we just fininshed Sid Fleischman 's Newberry Award winning book, "The Whipping Boy. The class laughed uproariously as we read about an unlikely friendship between Prince Brat and his royal whipping boy, Jemmy. Great discussions about trust, forgiveness and the nature of frienship emerged. Of course, we loved hearing about how the scurvy ruffians, Hold-Your-Nose Billy and Cutwater, ended up covered in rats! Check out the great illustrations in our room.

Students are still spending some classtime independently reading books at their current reading level.

Writing: Research projects are currently being typed up. It is so excting watching their progress at everything from sentence construction, spelling, organization and technology. Look forward to seeing these displayed at Grandparents/Special Friends day on Friday, May 14!

Math: We're wrapping up our unit on measurement. Volume was a bit tricky for some folks, but they've all got it down now! We'll do a quick review on time. Everyone-even kids working on different chapters- will all start the chapter on Fractions together. Everyone will be challenged at their own levels as we work through this important skill.

Science: What would life be like without wheels? We brainstormed some possiblities and then listed all the wheels we could think of. Students then had a chance to experiment with wheels, designing their own "rickshaws" that could give rides to pennies, and created cranks that demonstrated the way an axis works. (of course, they pretented to use them as fishing poles- gotta love it!)

Social Studies: Our study of Japan is in full swing. We've been learning about and creating the work of the Japanese woodblock master, Hokusai. Mrs. Ritchie shared some of her pictures from her year in Japan -favorites included the students she taught and their matching track suits!

Don't reinvent the wheel, just realign it- Anthony J. D'Angelo

Weekly Update April 21, 2010

Happy Birthday Earth Day!

You are 40 years old this

Thursday, April 22nd!

Fun with Force, Motion, Mass and Inclined Planes!! How many grams can this spring scale hold?

How many grams of force does it take to get the car rolling?

Does it stay the same once the car is going? Let's use a spring scale to check.

Having fun with force and motion and inclined planes.

Check out our inclined plane design!

Does the distance the cars travel change when we change the angle of the plane?

Now here's a complicated inclined plane!

Everyone had to run and check out this inclined plane design.

Here's What's Going On

In The Beacons' World:

Reading: All the Beacons selected independent reading books.We'll be giving them class time to let them read. We'll then conference with the students individually to discuss the book they are reading. Some students chose very lengthy novels and some chose shorter ones- so some students may get to read more than one book!

Writing: The research portion of the research papers are done. We are now working on composing topic and concluding sentences to make our paragraphs shine.

Math: We've been having a blast working with capacity, and customary units of weight and metric units of mass . We were immediately able to put our new skills to the test in science as we measured the amount of force it took to get objects moving with spring scales. We had fun working with a triple beam balance and weighing things around the room. FYI, homework folders weigh 97 grams (homework included)!

Science: It's been all about getting things moving this week as we combined the simple machine inclined planes and force and motion. Students' creativity really was worked as they created their own inclined plane designs, tested the effect of friction on planes, and experimented with changing plane angles and the distance covered by toy cars. We had lots of zooming sound effects to go along with the fun.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.-

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Looking forward to another great week at Seabury!

-Betsy and Tamara

Weekly Update April 14, 2010

Welcome Back

from Spring Break!

We hope you all had a relaxing time with your family!We loved hearing about all of your adventures!

Check out some our scientific experiments

using levers as simple machines:

Wow! I can use a lever to catapult this into the air!

Catapult!

Lifting heavy books with levers

Can I make this lever balance?

Check out how well I can use the fulcrum and get my lever balanced!

Here's What's Going on in

the Beacons' World:

Reading and Writing: We're also integrating reading and writing with our current research projects. Students are doing an amazing job narrowing their research into manageable subtopics,discerning important facts, and translating those facts into their own words. The next step will be to put the facts into paragraphs with topic and concluding sentences and create transitions between the paragraphs to flow into a well written essay.

Math: The name of our next chapter in math is: Measure Capacity, Weight, Volume and Time. While these skills are essential in life, so many of them can be taught through real-life means. We'll be doing lots of measuring and weighing in science for example, so we'll skim through this chapter rather quickly so we can spend more time on upcoming fractions and decimals this year. In the meantime, we had a great time making "Gallon Man" (or boy or girl) to show the relationship of gallons, quarts, pints and cups. Ask your Beacon all about it!

Science: Simple machines truly make our lives easier and we're learning all about them. We'll be conducting lots of experiments using simple machines. This week we'll be lifting a stack of heavy books with just one finger! Amazing!

Here's a fun website to play some activities with simple machines. www.edheads.org/activities/simple-machines/

Social Studies: Thursday and Friday we will be discovering the amazing art of Japanese orgami and the phenomenal artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Perhaps one of Hokusai's most famous pieces of art is the wooden block print "The Great Wave". Its correct name is "The Breaking Wave Off Kanagawa" from his series: "Thirty-Six Views of Fuji". Hokusai was single mindedly obsessed with art and created over 30,000 (yes you read that number correctly) works of art! Be ready for all the information and art work that your Beacon will be bringing home in the near future!

"Let the rain kiss you.

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.

The rain makes running pools in the gutter.

The rain plays a little sell-song on our roof at night.

And I love the rain." -Langston Hughes- April Rain Song.

Here's to another exciting week with your Beacon!

Betsy and Tamara