Authors Chair/Ones, tens, hundreds exchange

Our young writers got the opportunity to share with the class some of their great writing this afternoon in our authors chair. Giving the students an audience for their writing helps give them a purpose for their writing. They seem to really enjoy sharing all of their great work and the students are engaged listening to each author share. A couple of our writing prompts this week were "when I grow up..." and "last night I had a dream about..." or "I would like to have a dream about..." Both prompts are trying to get them to be as creative and imaginative as possible with their writing to hopefully ignite a passion for writing. Here are a few pictures from some of the students sharing their writing.

After sharing our writing we moved in to some math to end our day. We have been working really hard to develop a deep understanding of ones and tens with a greater understanding of our base 10 system of counting. We used cuisenaire rods, cubes, and blocks to show the relationship between 1s, 10s, and 100s. Students rolled a die to capture cubes and when they got to 10+ cubes they could exchange it in for a rod that was equivalent to 10 cubes. Once they got 10 rods they could exchange them for a block worth 100. It was very similar to our penny/nickel exchange game we played earlier in the year.

Making our own particleboard

Yesterday afternoon each student got the opportunity to make their own particleboard. After multiple investigations with particleboard included the students were given the materials to make their own. We used sawdust, wood shavings, and a glue made from cornstarch and water. They were able to mold their wood in any fashion they desired.

Weaving/Exploring Sawdust and Wood Shavings

During math we worked on patterning by weaving with construction paper. Students were able to experience tactile as well as a visual that helps promote patterning, hand-eye coordination, and directionality.  Here are a few pictures from our weaving experience (you can click on the picture to enlarge)...

In science the kiddos got to explore the difference between sawdust and wood shavings. They first investigated the two separately and then mixed them together to find out that the sawdust sunk to the bottom of the cup while the wood shavings came to the top. We then put the mixture into water and observed what happened. Students made claims that the wood began to sink because of the weight on the top of it, because it was being spun around by their stir stick, and because it was becoming wet from the water it was sitting in. We came to the conclusion that waterlogged wood eventually sinks to the bottom. After this discussion we separated the wood from the water by straining it.

Sinking and sanding wood

This afternoon we spent some time investigating how much weight (paperclips) it would take to sink various types of wood. We discovered that out of the five woods pine took the most paper clips ~15 and particle board sunk with ~5. Once we had completed that investigation we moved on to sanding wood. We investigated whether we could change the shape of wood by sanding and wondered how much sawdust we could accumulate as a class. Enjoy the pictures of our exploration below...