Halloween Pencil Tops

I am bragging about my parent volunteer again... Every year she makes the tops of pencils with a Halloween theme. I give her the picture of what I want with the supplies and she does all the magic. We use only felt, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, shiny fabric paint, pom-poms, and the pencils are from Target's dollar section. Take a look. Aren't they soooooo cute?

The haunted house is the theme for this year. The others have been from previous years.

Here are some other ones that we have done in the past.

She is also sewing my felt Halloween trick-or-treating bags for the kids as a haunted house. Will post that picture later.

What kind of goodies do you do for your kids?

Fabulous Class T-shirt

At the beginning of the year I saw this caricature t-shirt of students on Pinterest. I thought the drawings were beyond cute, and decided this would be a perfect class shirt for the year. WOW! I am so glad we ordered them.  The students brought in $8 each, drew a bust of themselves with only a black pen on a small index card, and off the order went to Whitney Daniels Designs (whitneydanielsdesigns.com). Three weeks later we have our fabulous, unbelievable, awesome, fantastic, too-cute, wonderful (I can go on and on), t-shirts.

 They are really a happy bunch, but they are starting to think they are too cool for pictures or smiling for that matter.

They come in a variety of colors and the quality is very good. ( NO I am not part owner or receiving any commission--lol!) I am definitely ordering these t-shirts every single year.

Vascular Plants *updated*

We are full speed ahead. We are currently working on vascular plants, their similarities and differences to the human circulatory system and the interdependence of both. We have covered the functions of different parts of the plant, especially the xylem, phloem, and photosynthesis in the leaves.

In our first investigation, we looked at how the vascular system in plants moves fluids and nutrients throughout the plant. We did this by looking at 4 celery stalks: 2 with leaves and 2 without leaves. Students had to design and conduct a scientific investigation. They weighed the stalks at the beginning of their investigation, drew pictures and filled in a table in their scientific journal.  Students then added 25mL of water to one stalk with leaves and one without leaves in a beaker. beaker. They repeated the weigh in at the end of the investigation. They discovered that leaves play a very important part in the transport of water. They then wrote down their conclusions in their journals. One group had very "different" results and we discussed the possibilities for those dramatic differences: incorrect weigh-in, leaning the stalk in a different direction on the scale (this creates great differences), incorrect measurement of water at the beginning, or even spillage of water.

 They cut the stalks to about 10 inches in length.

I had 4 stalks, all in water, and with red food coloring. I also had a beaker with 25 mL of colorless water to measure how much water had been absorbed. The transportation of fluids from the "roots" upwards to the leaves was very evident and for some, it opened up a whole set of questions regarding the change of leaf color. We discussed the "Why".  Some students wanted to duplicate at home with different liquids and/or food colors.

 Investigation one follow-up:

 Some students tried it with marker ink and Kool-Aid. We found out that the liquid was NOT moving up the stem as fast (even after a couple of days). This lead to great hypothesizing about the reason why. I love it when they have lots of questions brewing in their minds.

 Our second investigation consisted of students collecting different types of leave in a baggie. They arrived the next day eager to find out how we were going to use the leaves. I gave them time to draw some of their leaves, to use their magnifying glasses to make observations and compare the leaves they had brought. I them asked them to sort and classify the leaves any way they saw fit. Some sorted by size and others by shape.

We discussed why it is important for scientists to have a classification system for plants. We decided that it is important to have a system in place in order to study the organism in question, to learn more about it , to make sense of things/information, AND because it makes it much easier when everything is arranged in an orderly way. We therefore decided to sort and classify the leaves by the type of veins it possess.

Our third investigation dealt with going deeper into exactly how and where fluids and nutrients re transported in plants. We began by watching a magic School Bus video.



Students created a diagram of a plant. We used two different colored straws: one for the xylem and one for the phloem. We added stickers with a G(glucose/sap), W(water), and tiny stars for nutrients. We have gone over Photosynthesis as a chemical reaction that occurs only in the leaves inside the chloroplast. We have also acted out the path of the fluids, glucose and nutrients throughout the plant with very simple props. This really helped my kinesthetic learners.

I got the idea for the inside of the leaf as an interactive component from this FABULOUS science website by Eve Heaton: http://sciencenotebooking.blogspot.com She has some unbelievable notebook ideas. I am over there quite often.

Students will now be adding descriptions to their diagrams and the functions of different parts of the plant.

Sugar-Using and Testing for It in Cereals
We analyzed under what conditions plants make food. After many readings, short videos on BrainPop, and The Magic School Bus: Gets Planted, they understood that plants need water, O2 and energy from the sun to make glucose.


As a way to test whether or not glucose is important for plants, the students conducted an experiment in which they investigated what was necessary to activate yeast (from our FOSS kit). They took two 1 liter plastic bags and filled them with 50mL of warm water, 5mL of yeast,  and 1 of the bags had 2 crackers. Both bags where then placed in a warm bath for 10 minutes. After ten minutes, the students compared the bags. One bag had water vapor but nothing had occurred. The bag with the crackers had gotten puffy (inflated). They concluded that the bag with air is evidence that a reaction occurred--yeast is alive and active. The cookie (sugar) had provided food for the yeast, the plain water had not.

 The next investigation dealt with testing the amount of sugar in the cereals we consume at home.
They repeated the same procedures as the yeast. They took a 1L baggie and they all measured out 3 grams of their cereal to maintain consistency, 5mL of yeast, and 50mL of warm water.. They placed it in the warm bath and after ten minutes this is what we saw:

  

Captain Crunch, Frosted Flakes, and Trix had the greatest volume of CO2 when we measured it with the volume tubes--600+. Cheerios had the least volume--between 50 and 100. This was a big eye-opening investigation for the students. They could not believe that their favorite cereals contained sooooo much sugar. Some even said they would no longer be eating their favorite cereal. This of course are the results we gathered and they were not duplicated to draw definite conclusions.

If any else does this investigation, let us know your findings.


We will complete our unit by looking and comparing the cells of plants and animals. I have some ideas and other edible projects in mind that I have collected on Pinterest that I am dying to try.

What other things have you done in your classroom that has helped your students to fully understand the content?

Haunted House October Class T-shirt

My wonderful parent volunteer has completed yet another wonderful creation. Our October T-shirts came out wonderfully spooky AND they glow in the dark!  She is working on our Halloween topper pencils.

Sorry...It came out kinda of blurry.

I love my classrom door!

Sometime this summer, my addiction to Pinterest developed (and has mushroomed). I found so many wonderful ideas by wonderful teachers that I wanted to implement in my classroom immediately.

One of those ideas, was the welcoming and endearing message on the door. I was in love. The only problem was that I already had something on my door:

I therefore did the next best thing and placed my message on butcher paper right next to my door.

It took me FOREVER to make the words in the right size, the right font, etc.

BUT have no fear, one of my fav bloggers, Teresa, over at Confessions of a Teaching Junkie has the words for FREE. She is absolutely awesome! She also has a bunch of other resources, photos, ideas, TpT items (many, many, many for free). I was just there reading her latest blog and had to go get the math book she recommended from Amazon. I'll keep you up to date with photos and posts as I read and implement.