Salamanders!

Oh the fun we've had with salamanders lately! Have you see our amazing art? We painted paper like Eric Carle, then cut the paper into salamanders, adding googly eyes for extra awesomeness!

Please come see our awesome board!

We've been digging into information text in a very purposeful way as well. We read many salamander books, and watched videos, to help us understand more about them. We're writing a book all about salamanders!

Here's some of our research. We record thinking by drawing and writing. Then we took pictures and added them all here to this ThingLink.





We used the information we learned, and our salamander art to make an amazing informational movie!

Each student used ChatterPix to animate their salamanders. See each individual movie by using the Symbaloo below. We would love for you to leave a comment on our blogs about them!



We've also been working hard to write how to books! We even wrote one about our salamander. Check back soon for more about our salamander how to book, and individual stories!

Fraction Graham Crackers

We've been working to understand fractions as part of a whole shape.

Here are the charts that both classes made to help us anchor our understandings.

We also had some hands on fun with Graham Crackers!  Each student got to break a graham cracker and decide if the pieces were equal or unequal, as well as if it was in halves or fourths if it was equal.

Then we used Skitch to label our pictures, and either Twitter or Kidblog to share our understandings.

Here are our Tweets ...

Click here to see Mrs. Peterson's Class blog posts, and here to see Mrs. Zig's class blog posts.

Please have a safe and restful spring break! Looking forward to seeing all our happy faces back on the 23rd! 

Writing Like Mo Willems - We LOVE the Pigeon!

In the past few weeks, we've been studying all the great things Mo Willems does as an author and illustrator. We've read his books, watched videos of him and were inspired by his character, The Pigeon. So, naturally, we wrote Pigeon stories!!

Then we made videos of ourselves reading what we wrote, next to a giant Pigeon! It was tons of fun!

Here's a playlist of the videos. (Each of these videos is unlisted on YouTube - which means you have to have the link to find it. We did this since your child is actually in the video. If you would like the direct link to your child's video(s), email me and I'll send them to you.)

We also posted each video on our KidBlog. Please click here to view your student's post. Remember we LOVE comments!

You can also come by and see our AWESOME, interactive Pigeon display in the hallway.

Create with 2D Shapes

We've moved on to using 2D shapes with fractions in Math, but we totally forgot to share this and wanted you to see some of the awesome projects we did while studying 2D shapes.

We used an app called Pattern Shapes to create with shapes, then used Chatterpix to share the process we used to make our designs.

Here's one we did together -

We also made pictures from shapes with MoMA Art Lab, and labled them with Skitch. 

Check out this Padlet wall we used to put many of our videos and pictures in one place.

Created with Padlet

In order to see a video, just click the play button, then download. They are very short videos, so it will only take a matter of seconds.

Thanks for watching!

Amphibians

What is an amphibian? Are they like reptiles?

Slick is an amphibian!

We started ivestigating amphibians today, and will continue to collect information about them in the next few weeks. We'll be studing informational books, and writing an informational book soon!

We got started with a few fun videos today, and took some great notes.