This week in Alpha…
Alphas enjoying the movie Ezi made to cheer up our friend Anna when she was in hospital!
Best medicine ever.
This week in the Ocean…
This week we learned how important the motion in the ocean is to the health of our planet and how global warming is putting that circulation in danger.
If we put water in a tray, the water is very still – is the water at the shore still?
Here’s how waves land on land – it doesn’t stay there, it moves back out, UNDER the swells! No Alphas were hurt in the making of waves…
So what moves the water to shore? WIND! But NOT by a massive hair dryer…
We saw how hot air rises, allowing cool air to swoop in – makes wind!
Alphas learned that when the sun shines on land it heats up. When the sun shines on the water, the air heats up too but at a MUCH slower rate. Because the air over the water is cooler than on land, when the land-air rises, the cool ocean air swoops in and pushes the water as it blows. Waves are very important to the phytoplankton because waves help churn up the water so the minerals from the bottom of the ocean can reach the floating plankton (which is the base of not only the food web in the ocean, but also the producer of at least half of the oxygen on Earth)!
Wind Moves Water(colors)!!!!!
Alphas learned that our seasons are extremely important to the health of our planet because of another amazing motion in the ocean. Alphas figured that the chubbiest part of the Earth would be warmest because it is closest to the sun and they learned that when ocean water freezes, the salt does not freeze with it! The salt stays and sinks. That motion begins the global Thermohaline current! It is like a huge conveyor belt of water that carries deep sea nutrients that come from minerals and marine snow (the ocean’s compost) all over the ocean!
If the Earth gets too warm and the ice can’t form in the North or South Poles, it could spell big trouble for the thermohaline currents!
“Check out the ice that started forming on my pitcher of super salty water I had in the Delta’s freezer!”
The heavy, cold salt water sinks below the watermer less salty water and begins its journey…
After learning that ocean currents, being a primary source of transportation, nutrient circulation, and the creator of favorable climates we then discovered that as the earth rotates so do currents. Rotating clockwise above the equator and counterclockwise below the currents create 5 major gyres in our oceans. These gyres move slowly and as they move things get caught up in them – primarily plastic! We saw in buoyancy experiments how plastics float easier than other items.
Alphas had a lot to say about plastic and things they’ve learned about how it affects animals. We watched a short video on things that have been pulled out from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Ocean Cleanup. Thank you to all of our families for using reusable lunch, snack, and waterbottle containers! Table teams each created one of the 5 major gyres.
This week in Math…
Ms. Kim’s group…
We explored cubes, practiced our math facts, and played the card game, “What do I need…”
Sharing and sorting our spheres from home
“You need 5 more to make 8, Ellie!”
Math Pentathlon Valentine’s Day FUN!
Ms. Eliza’s group…
This week we talked about counterexamples. The language of counterexamples is important to distinguish true and false claims in mathematics. We proved a couple of counterexamples wrong…one that it’s impossible to make a hexagon from only 2 blocks…Another…a hexagon can’t be made with 20 or more shapes!
We played a game with the same animal outline and without being able to see our partners’ we had to ask ourselves…would it be the same? Different? How many blocks would we use? What was the difference in the amount of blocks we used?
This week in Language Arts…
Ms. Eliza’s group…
We learned that ph in the English language is a thief! Ph stole the Fsound!
So when we see it in phone, photo, phase, phantom or phonics, to say a few, we now know we just need to pronounce it as F.
We’ve been reading the delightful McDuff series by Rosemary Wells. Aside from being an adorable dog who has very funny facial expressions. We’ve been talking about how even a little dog has stories to tell and we’ve been sharing our own stories.
Ms. Kim’s group…
We started off the week considering the poets Langston Hughes and E.E. Cummings. They lived at the same time and were both well established and respected writers. They lived very different lives, and their poetry reflected the injustices each saw in the world around them. They wrote about realities in their worlds in interesting and imaginative ways.
We also alphabetized, we added “ed” to verbs, no matter whether they sounded like a “t,” a “d,” or an “id!”
We read with our ELA table teams, and we read and we wrote concrete poems with our first year friends on Valentine’s Day!
In other news…
Valentine’s Day!!!!!
Can you make a heart out of legos? Why, Yes we can!
Valentine exchange after lunch
Making our big, biG, BIG fruit Salad!
Larry struck again!!!!!!
ACK! Our little mischief maker hid ALL of our pencils!!!! It looks like we are going to have to do something to get him to stop wreaking havoc on our classroom!
Once we recovered our tools, we had to redistribute them!
Not everyone seems to mind having Larry around…
….like – The Betas…they seem to be missing the rascal!
Cookin’ with Aqua Cherry Table…
This week’s culinary adventure with flour, salt and water took us to homemade pasta!
