Solar science!

We are having a fantastic time learning about solar energy!  Today kids were partnered up and were challenged to build solar houses.  Students each had a cardboard box to use as well as many other optional supplies (sand, gravel, rocks, clear wrap, aluminum foil and marbles).  Students had to engineer a house with 5 windows and 1 door.  Tomorrow we will be testing these to see which houses warm the most when placed in the sun.  

We used what we had learned in science over the past few days to decide on the material that would best heat up our houses.  The pictures below are of our heat sync activities and equator experiment.

WELCOME TO FIFTH GRADE!!

It has taken me 11 years to get to 5th gade, but here I am-I finally passed 2nd grade (hehe)!!  I am so excited to start this new journey with all of you:)  I just know we are going to have a WONDERFUL,fun-filled year packed with all kinds of learning!! Have a fantastic weekend and I look forward to seeing you all here on Tuesday.
~Mrs. Curtiss      

Dinosaur Diggers

Here are the kids practicing to be archaeologists.  They worked very hard on getting the chocolate chips and M&Ms out of the cookie without breaking them.  This is like an archaeologist because they work with small tools and have to be careful too!

Here is our dinosaur egg.  In this picture it is starting to hatch.  My kindergarten daughter was worried that it would hatch over night and be running around the room in the morning.  The second graders knew it was pretend, but still enjoyed watching it hatch!

It's a baby Stegosaurus!

We named him Stego.

Now we are the real deal.  We are digging bones out of rock to solve a dinosaur mystery.  What kind of dinosaur will it be?  Everyone is having fun chiseling the rock away.  We have to wear safety glasses so we don't get any flying rock in our eyes.  This is so much fun, but after 2 days of chiseling we still have not uncovered our first bone! 

There is a bone in this picture, can you see it?