Ask Me About Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Today we went to a Mad Science assembly. During the show students explored  the scientific process learned the science behind magic, explored air pressure, and saw spectacular indoor fireworks, and discovered the secret behind sublimation with  bubbling potions.  Ask me to tell you about the pictures below from the assembly!

I'm having technical difficult at school with the pictures, so I'll edit this at home, but I'll keep them up for now!

Today we also worked with the counting-on strategy in math for addition.  We will continue to work with addition and subtraction facts and story problems.  We reviewed /sh/, /ch/, and /th/.  We went on a word hunt around the room and found lots of words with these sounds in them.  We also found them in a poem about best friends we read today.  We identified the main idea of the poem, and found the supporting details for the main idea.  We continued to Read Across America with a beautiful story of two friends from Mississippi, called Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles.  The story is set in Mississippi just after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Two little boys, one African American and the other white, are very good friends, but because John Henry is African American, he is not allowed to do everything his friend Joe can do in town.  They are so excited to find out the segregation has ended.  Ask me to tell you what happens when they get to the pool.  At the end of the story, the two boys go in together to the General Store in town to buy ice pops.  We don't know what happens when the boys go in, but we talked about what we hoped would happen.  This book is a beautifully written story of friendship during the difficult time of segregation in our history.  I am so proud of how thoughtful the children were in their discussion of this book.  It's a big, difficult topic, so we also talked about how things have changed but that we need to continue to make the world a better place for everyone.  I don't want the children to have a negative view of the South and Mississippi, so we spent a little time looking at pictures of Mississippi, and the might Mississippi River. We looked at steamboats and watched a couple snippets of  Steamboat Willie and an actual working steamboat. We will learn more about steamboats and transportation after Spring Break!   Below is a video of a little boy reading Freedom Summer.  Enjoy!

Have a nice evening!
Juliet