The Rookery

 Our last class at Wolf Ridge was the ropes course.  I was ambivalent about that.  Yes, it could be a very exciting way to end the week.  On the other hand, sometimes when students do not do every stage of the ropes course they are frustrated and feel that they've…

Great day – but cold.  The video camera was so cold that it hurt to hold it so I don't have a ton of footage.  Why the long video then?  Because I hit the wrong button and included whole clips instead of doing the auto edit and by the time…

It's true…these fourth graders have been lost in space these last two days!  Tuesday we started our planet research.  The 'astronauts' have been working in groups of three researching a planet (we also included the sun and pluto in our research).  Each group is making a travel brochure for other…

Things continue to go swimingly — well, not "swimingly" — no unfrozen water around.  We had a wonderful time at our class on birds.  The Herons did an especially nice job making discoveries during the lab portion of the class where we analyzed bird parts to determine the characteristics of…

Hello from the cold (but not as cold as it's going to get) North.  The Herons had a great first day.  We studied Wolf Lake, looking at its ice depth, fish population and temperature.  After we collected data, we got to try our hand at ice fishing and two very,…

Bustling, excitement, and three galaxies – this morning the 4th graders came in ready to get going on their space week work.  They made signs for our galaxies, Tadpole Galaxy (aka the Robins), Whirlpool Galaxy (aka the Kestrels), and Black Eye Galaxy (aka the Herons).  They found their hooks for…

This week has afforded the Herons a chance to try our hand at some geometry, logic, and network math.  (See Cathy's great blog about the network exploration).  We're beginning a unit on fractions as soon as we return from Wolf Ridge and Space.  This will dovetail nicely with our work…

For the next several weeks, the Big Birds will be rotating through a series of three engineering workshops with Cathy, Amy, Rachel and myself.  Rachel and I are working with the kids in chemical engineering. Engineers need to understand the materials they work with.  This is a key point in…

Build an Atom The Elements (by They Might Be Giants) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lasalle/buoybasics.html http://www.spartechsoftware.com/reeko/experiments/floating.htm http://boatsafe.com/kids/021598kidsques.htm http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lasalle/buoyancy.html  

Looking On-Line – Tips and Reminders Search safely – spelling things correctly and use a kid friendly search engine. If you look at a website for more than 3 minutes and don’t find something new, go to a new site. Check to see who wrote the information – an author…