Visit to the Library

Our class took a quick trip to the library last week to get more resources for our research projects.  Rachel, the teen librarian at the Des Moines Library, was very helpful and showed the kids how to use the catalog and the dewey decimal system.  It was a fun visit and the kids got tons of resources for their projects.

Home Depot Field Trip

Home Depot Field Trip

Yesterday we headed off to the Home Depot for a field trip to get some prices on our lumber and other materials for the sandbox project.  Thank you to Fred Meyer and Jaime DeLong for coming with me.

Fred did an AWESOME job of helping the kids understand the different things we were going to need and how we would construct it.  He even created little examples in the aisle of  Home Depot.

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It was exciting to see our brainstorming and ideas starting to come together.

From her we went to the place where we would most likely get our sand and they showed us where it was an gave us a visual of how much we would need.  Sam has calculated the volume of the box as 10 cubic yards.  Their "little" dump truck holds 6 so we will need a full one and a partial.  It is a LOT of sand.

Today in class a group of students spent some time calculating the total cost of the wood.  They are preparing ideas for their presentation to the Board in a few weeks.

Thanks for your support on this project.

Star Gazing- Solstice Park

Star Gazing - Solstice Park

Thanks to everyone who was able to join us on Friday for star gazing.  It was really cool to see the kids apply their research knowledge to the sky.  They were able to find the North Star, Big Dipper and a few planets.  If you didn't make it I would encourage you to take your kiddos outside and see what they know.  They spent a lot of time doing some research.  In addition to some star gazing it was just nice to spend time as a group outside of the classroom. 

Here are some pictures of our evening out.  (Sorry they aren't great - it was pretty dark).

Planning for Star Gazing

Star Gazing

Today with the help of Chris Yeargin we begun the planning for our class star gazing trip on Friday.  We talked about what we might see, what we hoped to see and were left with some questions.  The class took some time looking in books, looking online and having a discussion about various aspects of the trip.

Chris will be back on Thursday and we hope to answer the following questions:

If you child wants to work on this at home it would be great.  Several mentioned that they had a book or other tool that they wanted to bring in and share and that would also be great.

We are all very excited for Friday.  I hope you can make it!

MAST Aquarium Field Trip

We had the opportunity to visit the Highline Community College MAST Aquarium this month.  It was such a cool hands on experience for the kids.  They got to touch a lot of critters and learn about what happens in the water near our houses and school.  

I highly recommend you making a visit there on one of their free Saturdays.

Here are a few pictures.

Welcome to the Rainforest Explorers Page

Welcome to the Rainforest Explorers Page! 

 

This page will be where I communicate the news happening in our class to Rainforest Explorer parents.  Eventually the students will begin publishing to the blog as well.  I am very excited for them to get a chance to share their work via our blog.  Think of this as an electronic newsletter for families.  I will email you a link for when it is updated, but also you can subscribe on the right hand side so that you will be emailed when the blog is updated.

What's been happening in class?

Room Name
Today the class named our room the Rainforest Room.  Over the past two days we have brainstormed a list, narrowed it down and finally took a vote.  It was a fun process.  We are anxiously awaiting the naming of the big front room!  The names on the rooms will help kids identify where they go for math, reading, etc.  A lot easier than calling them the big room, middle room and back room.  

Literacy
We have been talking about strategies for picking books that are just right for you and what to do if a book is challenging or you don't like it.  As part of our "About Me Unit" we have looked at biographies and started brainstorming ideas for writing autobiographies.  A list came home yesterday that your student created.  I would love to have their responses to these questions back in class by Wednesday, September 19th.  We will begin writing these this week and next week.  I have read with every student and next week we will begin small groups based around skills and interests.

Math
This week we have been working on ways to solve situation math problems (story problems) in groups and individually.  I have also been working with students individually to see where they are in math so we can move forward with small math groups. I won't be sending homework home on a regular basis for math, but will often email you games, suggestions or other ideas on how you can support what we are doing in the classroom at home.   

Upcoming
I am very excited to begin a special project next week.  The Rainforest Explorers will be helping to design and build the sandbox for our next outside area.  This will be a combination of our literacy and math time.  Skills you should expect your student your student to use and practice are measurement, scaled drawings, perimeter, area, budgeting and presentations.  Our plan is for the class to look at the area, design what they think would be the best fit, cost it out (after a trip to the hardware store), make a presentation to present to the Board of Directors and then share their final idea with the other students.  This is a SUPER EXCITING project for our class. I can't wait to get started.  If you have skills in building, drawing plans or anything else you think would be helpful here please let me know.  I would love to have some help!  (I will be talking to the class about this on Thursday - so they don't know yet).

Thanks for sharing your kiddos with me this year!

Jennifer