Back to Life, Back to Reality!

Whew! Being lazy over the break made it super duper hard to get back in the swing of things. It was a tough week for me. I just wasn't feeling it. Next break, I will just be my normal, busy self, so I welcome going back to school. :) Thankfully, we did lots of fun things this week. We also didn't have intervention times, so I felt like I actually had time to really teach and dig in this week. if only every week could be like that!

I thought you might like to see some of our fun!

We built a snowman and estimated how long it would take to melt. They LOVED this! It's super easy, too. Just fill up some balloons with a small, medium, and large amount. Put them in a bowl. Then put a plate on top of them so that one side gets a little flatter. Stick them in the freezer overnight. The next morning, stack them up and decorate with felt pieces. The ice balls did keep sliding off of each other, so I used some salt to help stick them together. He lasted a LONG time so you might want to make them smaller.

He wasn't even close to being melted by the time I left school, but when we came back in the next morning, his pieces were just floating in the water. The water was ice cold, so I don't think he had been completely melted very long. They loved seeing the pieces floating there and we got to talk about how sometimes our guesses or hypothesis's won't be correct and that's ok!

Then we did another experiment to show what happened to a hibernating bear and an awake bear in the winter. Thanks Teacher to the Core! I filled up baby food jars with water. Then I put a pat of butter in each jar. The hibernating bear, just sat on the table sleeping in his cave. The awake bear was up roaming around. He was climbing trees, running down hills, rolling in the dirt, swimming witht he fish, and so much more :) We passed him around the room and the kids shook it up while we decided what activity he was doing. By the end, that poor bear was super tired, super hungry, and had no energy left. 

As you can see, the hibernating bear still has all of his fat. He loses it very slowly since he isn't active. The poor awake bear really used up a lot of his extra fat though.Uh oh. He probably wasn't going to make it through the winter. Poor bear! There just isn't enough food around for him to be that active. 

We also read this comprehension passage from my January Printables packet. The kids thought it was very interesting and got to learn some words to go on our vocabulary tree, like the word "scarce".

Finally, I wanted to show you our Math journals. We do a word problem a week in them and then we do other activities on skills we are working on each week. I plan on making them even more interactive the rest of this year. Here's what we used them for this week. 

Number Lines!

Here is the number line page, next to one of our word problems. 

They wrote their equation underneath. They think it's so cool that they can "lift the flap". :)

It was a fun week, even though I couldn't get back in the swing of things". I faked it well. :)

Tomorrow is my first graduate class at Lipscomb. Fun, fun!

What fun things are you doing this month in your classroom? 

Be fun and fabulous (even when you don't want to be)!

~Mrs. Sweeney