Volume 26: February 29, 2016

A tremendous amount of thinking and generating new ideas has been done this week. Students have continued the inquiry into how Nature and Humans can impact the Weather in a number of ways. Posed with a blank poster, we zoomed out and decided to look at the Earth, sun, and moon. Students shared their prior knowledge and came up with an activity that might simulate the rotation and revolution of the Earth, sun, and moon. Our discussions and work led us to a deeper understanding of why seasons exist, climate is weather of a longer period of time, and how one action in the world can affect (is connected) another part of the world. Yes, global warming came up. Thanks to a parent, we looked at this article which provided a great visual to how the average temperatures all around the world have increased over the past 140 years. As a warp up to our discussion, we did look at this interactive game with the Earth, sun, and moon, which I highly encourage you to play with your child at home!

Another activity students want to do was to learn about myths. We looked the website www.bigmyth.com to identify the characteristics, or elements of a myth. Then, we read a Greek myth, Persephone and Demeter, to see how myths could connect to weather and how people in the past have explained weather. One student said, "Maybe we could write our own weather proverbs and put them in weather myths?" So, we are! Students will create their own original myth that explains the existence of an element of weather today, like "Why is there wind on the Earth today?" I can not wait to see what we write.

We did examine a new aspect of weather, clouds. Wow, there is so much to know. We went outside to describe them, and created a Cloud Book, based on our experiences and reading about clouds. Pretty cool.

We began our new math unit, Landmarks in the 1000's. We are reviewing multiples, factors, and how 10, 100, and other numbers can be used as "landmarks" or friendly numbers to help add and/or subtract mentally. We are also exploring writing complex equations in many ways.

Enjoy the week... the weather feels like spring, but we are not sure if it will last? Seriously, we are studying weather and many students have posed a form of this question: "Why is it so hot this winter?" I think we are starting to find some possible reasons why...

Homework: Read 20 minutes and continue to prepare your March book share. If you need poster paper, please let me know or have your child let me know.

 Basketball head:)

 Sofia... book share.

 Is there any other way to study clouds?

 Happy birthday!

 Persephone and Demeter

 Working with multiples and factors of 100.

 We built "packages" for Beheshta's candy factory! Each package had exactly 100 cubes, one for each piece of candy.

The experiment we designed. Can you tell which is the sun and Earth? (Directly above) A student explains the revolution and rotation of the Earth on its tilted axis to explain the reason for the seasons!