Today the Snapdragons enjoyed a really fun visit from all of their VIPs! The students are starting to study the Olympics in social studies, so together with their VIPs the students made Olympic flags. The Snapdragons used many different materials to do this, including feathers, pom poms, construction paper, markers and jewels. The Snapdragons are excited to keep going for the gold as the Olympics start next week!
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To celebrate the completion of the projects that students have been working on since our Home Depot field trip, Snapdragon families came in and got to see the final product! The students were so proud to share all of their hard work with their visitors. The Snapdragons showed the families the video from the trip, as well as the video of the students explaining how to use the tools. So many GBS staff members stopped by to see the projects and everyone was so impressed! The Snapdragons also invited two of the other classrooms to come see their work and ask the Snapdragons about their projects before the parents came in. It was awesome to see all of the students show off what they had been working on! This past Wednesday, the Snapdragons celebrated their 100th day of school. The celebration started in the morning with a 100 day packet, and then the students did 100 different movement exercises. In book clubs each group read a story about a girl's 100 day of school project. During math, the students did an estimation activity. After teachers explained what estimation is, each student was given a bag that had 100 of something inside it. There were base 10 blocks, pom poms, pennies, pieces of paper, rings, colored pencils, Perler beads, legos and snap cubes. The students had to guess how many of each item was inside the bag. Afterwards teachers revealed that there were 100 of each item in the bag. The students were really surprised! Then, to end the day the students put on some 100 day glasses and received certificates congratulating them on learning for 100 days! The Snapdragons have spent the past few weeks learning about the states of matter in science. Braque has been teaching them about how matter can change between a gas, a liquid, and a solid. In order to explore these states of matter the Snapdragons got to make putty! The students were discussing whether the putty was a liquid or a solid, and then learned that there is a word for something that is between the two states of matter. Braque walked them through the ingredients needed to make the putty, and then the students even got to play with it afterwards. Other forms of exploration have included reading books and playing games about this topic. The Snapdragons enjoyed playing with the putty and are excited to continue this exploration! A few weeks ago the Snapdragons expressed an interest in building with some real tools, so this week we took a field trip to Home Depot! Before going on the trip the Snapdragons spent some time brainstorming some ideas of what they would like to build and even drew blueprints of those ideas. We talked about taking the subway there and went over all the expectations for what to do both on the subway and in the store! Once we got to Home Depot an employee showed us some different types of tools that we would need for our project. We looked at different types of hammers and learned about which one would be best for us to use. The students then got a demonstration of how to use a clamp, a drill, a hammer and a saw. They even got to practice using the clamp, hammer and saw! The teachers picked up some other materials that we would be using before we got back on the subway to go back to school. The students really enjoyed starting to work with the tools during choice time and even wore the Home Depot aprons that the employees gave them to wear while they worked! The Snapdragons will continue to have time to work on their projects and we are excited to see what they make! Over the past few months, the Snapdragons have been learning about photography in art. They have been exploring different types of photography through the use of digital cameras and iPads. The students have gotten to use their pictures for projects including collages, using paint markers to add color to black and white pictures, and putting together picture puzzles. Another part of this photography unit has been starting to make their own pinhole cameras. So far the students have built, decorated and painted the cameras. They are looking forward to getting to use them! This week, the Snapdragons practiced taking different types of pictures on a photo walk using the iPads. The students had to take pictures of something in their favorite color, something with a circle in it, something that makes noise, an interesting piece of garbage, something that showed the first letter of their name, something with a pattern, and several other cool categories. The Snapdragons came up with so many amazing ideas and are excited to get to see and use the pictures that they took! This year the Snapdragons are learning to type on laptops! Katie and Eileen teach typing every Tuesday and Friday using the Mavis Beacon program. The students are learning about “home keys” and how to move their fingers to type other letters. At the end of each lesson the students enjoy playing a typing game. The Snapdragons are extremely eager and motivated to practice typing! The Snapdragons have had quite a busy month of school! We jumped right into reading and math, which has had the students working incredibly hard. Through our read alouds, we are building community and putting together a board of all the things that we are working on as a class. We also spent a lot of time working on coming up with our class name. We explored plants, researched four types of plants, persuaded each other about which types of plants each student would like to be, and then voted! Now that we are The Snapdragons, we can discuss ways that we are similar to snapdragons, and the students have come up with some pretty amazing ideas, such as the fact that we grow together and we all have our differences! Stay tuned for some more explorations of snapdragons and snapdragon related activities! |
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