Math mentors and Grandparent Day

We've had lots of visitors to our class this week.  I think the grandparents were the favorite!

Bike Day!

We love bike day!  We rode bikes, brainstormed different types of transportation, graphed the number of wheels on our bikes and made patterns using transportation pasta.  It was all about wheels today!

According to the Ladybugs these are different ways to get from one place to another:
car, time machine, airplane, truck, garbage truck, boat, bike, motorcycle, train, bullet train, parachute, rocket, cement mixer, dump truck, submarine, jet pack, helicopter, space ship, sailboat, bus, bulldozer, surf board, shoes, roller skates, elevator, escalator, skate board, rollerblades, ice skates, boosters, horse, hot air balloon, camel, running, jet, suction cups, training wheels, scooter, school bus, taxi, race car, raft, row boat, motor boat, jet ski, kites, and ferry boats.

Apples!

There were apples to cut out,

Surveys to be taken,

data to be recorded,

and data to be analyzed.

Apples needed peeled,

and they needed to be cut up.

We investigated and tasted 4 kinds of apples.

We wore safety glasses, used tweezers and magnifying glasses to aid in our investigation.

   

We made apple pie

and measured the peels!

It was a busy week learning about apples.  We learned about the life cycle of the apple tree and used apples for a scientific investigation.  We tasted 4 different kinds of apples and voted for our favorite kind ( Red Delicious won by a landslide).  We painted, cut, measured, baked, and gathered information from the rest of the school.  (we're exhausted!)

Our math mentors were back this week to work on geometric shapes.  The Gumshoes' teacher, Mr. B., wrote a great blog post last week on the value of mentors in the classroom.  If you haven't read it yet, check it out on the Gumshoes' blog.  (access it on the sidebar of this posting)

Fun in the sun

These sunny days have been perfect for recess and playing with our new water table and our gutter system on the playground.  We're hoping for a few more good days out there!

Our math mentors, the Gumshoe class, came in on Friday and helped us work on number recognition while playing a game called "Race to the Top".  We love it when the big kids came to class!  We also had our first visit from our art specialist,  Ms. Head.  We learned about horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines and did some art in the Mondrian style.  It's been a fun week!

Settling in!

There are lots of things to do at school,

some we do by ourself,

some we do with an adult,

and some we do with our math mentors!

The Gumshoe class will be our math mentors this year,

we're setting up a schedule for regular weekly visits from the big kids.

We're pretty happy about this!

Snack time-good for eating and conversation.

We've had a very successful first week.  The kids are learning the routine and getting to know each other.  I think we're going to have a great year together.