FINALLY

So, I gave up on waiting for the guy to rototill the garden, and we did it the old-fashioned way. Kids were outside for half of each class yesterday hoeing, shoveling, and raking our way to a garden.

It was such a great learning experience. We learned about sassafras since the whole courtyard began to fill with the aroma of root beer as we dug up the earth. We found all of the stages of the beetle life cycle/metamorphosis. We learned how to use tools (never assume a kid has seen a garden tool before!) It was fun and amazing. After we got most of the land cleared, it was time to put in a few plants.

Ta-dah! We are making our way to a garden!

Long time, No post!

Good morning! It has been a long time since I posted on either blog!! I've had some computer difficulty at school, but it seems to be working fine today.

Exciting news, yesterday I WON a Silhouette SD @ familylicious.com

I am so excited, it is valued at $349. One of the projects I have always wanted to do, is have a tee shirt that goes with each topic...like a vocab tee shirt. Why? I don't know. I just always thought it would be cool to have a mitochondria tee or something like that with a clever saying:) Anything to help the kids learn!! Besides, it would become like a new uniform, less having to think about what to wear!!

So, the garden. Well, it is still located INSIDE my classroom. I'm not holding my breath on the rototilling. The man who is supposed to rototill has not yet. SO, here are some pics of what the garden looks like so far:

Soybeans:

Pumpkins

carrots!!

lettuce

Peas:

Tomatoes: (don't worry, the leaves are supposed to be yellow, I'm not killing them:)

cucumbers:

The lonely collard greens (only Birica was interested in planting them)

Planting Day!

Today we planted seeds! Before planting, we were able to go over some fun facts about the different seeds we would be planting.

For instance, did you know that carrots can be red, purple, white or yellow? Or that they were the first commercially canned vegetable? The kids were surprised that carrots have seeds. Then we talked about what part of the "carrot" a "carrot" is...


Did you know that corn is grown on every continent except Antarctica? Or, did you know that a bushel of corn sweetens 400 cans of cola?

Peas were brought over from England with the first settlers, and they were one of the first crops that they successfully planted.

We also planted cucumbers, that are related to melons. The largest recorded cucumber weighed 59 lbs!

Then we planted sunflowers, and poppies and marigolds. The world needs flowers too!

In my C hour class, our friends from the TLC class and the Life skills class came over to join in. Once again, we had a great time! Each group was able to plant 8 different kinds of seeds...and hopefully when we get back from April Vacation we will see some progress!!

In my other classes, the kids planted various seeds, sometimes they even got to choose! They were very excited about the pumpkins. "Will they be there when we are in eighth grade?" I told them I hope so!!

I did take photos in my C-hour class. I was VERY impressed with how the kids in my D, E and G hour classes remembered how to make paper pots, and did so successfully! I let them choose to plant whatever they wanted! (not a lot chose radishes).

So, as we roll into April Vacation, we will be coming back to some germination!

Hopefully, soon the weather will shape up in the evenings, and we will be able to transfer our plants outside!

I will probably not blog tomorrow, as most kids are going to NYC or Quebec...but HAVE A HAPPY VACATION!! I will be in Niagara Falls, not looking at the waterfalls though, just visiting mom:)

Busy, busy!

It was so great to meet many of you (again) during the Knight of Excellence!  Thank you for stopping by to see what we have been up to in our room this year.

I have been trying to blog once a school day, but have been super-busy finalizing grades!! Now that they are in, I can get back to blogging:)

Grades for term 3 are often lower than you are used to seeing your child achieve higher science averages...but the content is VERY difficult!

So, today they had another pop quiz...I am really trying to get them to practice their Punnett Squares, genotypes, and phenotypes.

So, here's the exciting news, our SOYBEANS are GROWING!!

Well, most of them.

And so are our tomatoes, notice the different leaf colors?  Some are green, some are yellow, and some are yellow-green...

And more soybeans.  They are even bigger than they were this morning!!  See the yellow green in the front, and the dark green in the back?

And then we have the little yellows...that won't grow up  too much!

Can you see the baby Guppy? We also had some baby fish born...only two were still around on the Knight of Excellence...and here is one (near the turret)

Knight of Excellence!

Tonight is the Knight of Excellence!!

This evening, I would love for everybody to stop by room 124 and see what we have been up to this year!! I did my best with setting up.  Quite honestly, I ran out of time!  I would love to hang up each and every piece of beautiful work we made this year, but the fire department frowns on that.  Actually they have a definite rule.  No more than 25% of our wall can be covered with paper.

We all know, I honor and respect the fire department...not only did I have the house fire, but my dad is a fire chief. How's that for irony?

Anyways, swing on down and see what we have been up to. I know that according to "ratemyteacher" I am a horrible, attitude-ful person (really, really upset me to read the reviews) BUT I think that 90% of my students will say I am actually a pretty good teacher. I guess it's all in a kid's perception.

For Example: Some boy at Cumby's pointed out of the window at me sitting in the car and said "I hate that woman, she's mean." My husband was in Cumby's and said "That's my wife, and you are being disrespectful." So, when he tells me a "student" of mine said this I informed him that I had never seen that boy before in my life. Maybe I had once yelled at him for running through the hallways...so apparently I am mean now. I am trying not to take it to heart.

THANK YOU TO Mrs. Lim for providing us with a classroom blender. I am SO very excited, and I can't wait to do our DNA extractions this year. I promise you, the kids think that it is really cool to do something that "real" scientists do on a regular basis.

SO....drumroll please....our plants are growing! I am not planting any other seeds with the kids until after April vacation. Quite frankly, I am going to see my mom and I haven't figured out how I'm going to care for the tomato and soybean plants...anybody want to plant sit??

I think I am going to just make a faux greenhouse with the clear trash bags Mr. Homer has.

Ok, here's the REAL drumroll....

All our little soybeans in a row:

Katie E's Beautiful soybean plant

Emily A's beautiful tomato trio. I must tell you, that she cares so much about her plants that she wanted to come visit them during activity hour...and it shows!! She must have a green thumb because she is the only student with 3 germinated seeds!!

Sprouted...and Odaiko New England

So today was Odaiko New England, aka the "Japanese Drummers." I took some video with my phone...so here are some of the videos:)

So today was Odaiko New England...Here are some video clips from the show!  The kids had a blast.  Not only did they get out of class...they learned a lot about the culture of Japan and the importance of the Japanese drumming.  Did you know that "odaiko" means "big fat drum?"

Soybean named "bungalow" 

I was out sick yesterday, which is always terrible because I hate missing class time (because I leave the kids work...and have no control over it...and the substitute makes their own decisions...) However, we make the best of it!  The best part was, there were sprouts in the soybeans!!  Soybeans germinate much faster than tomatoes.  So, we have one tomato sprouted and several soybeans!

a whole lotta soy!

Katie E's Soybean

Our ONE tomato sprout...only about 99 to go!

Soybeans and some Spongebob!

I don't know why, but Spongebob makes kids happy.  A few years back I discovered a set of worksheets created by Tracy Trimpe, and they use Spongebob to teach genetics.  For some bizarre reason this is a genius idea.  I heard kids excited about it in the hallway.  BEFORE they got to class.  That means, they talked about it.  That means it caught their attention!!

So the words of the day were:

Homozygous

Heterozygous

Genotype

Phenotype


Then we applied these words and put them to work doing a little Spongebob Genetics!

NO visible changes in the seeds yet...I will update photos on Monday...but I did take pics today. 

Hopefully they will grow a little by then:)

So, over the weekend, have your child explain to you how they used our friend Spongebob (from the previously thought to be educationally useless cartoon) to learn about GENES!