A Moment of Sharing in 4th Grade Challenge

Really. Why not have a moment of sharing? Especially when you can put a pink popper on a student's head and wait for it for pop. How delightful.




Seriously, 4th graders look forward to a field trip to Jefferson County Park next Thursday to identify Iowa trees Lewis and Clark saw on their expedition.

What's a Moebius Strip Anyway? - 5th Grade

5th graders know what to do to a piece of paper to make it have one side. Just ask your student.These 5th graders are all decked out in their Moebius strip loops.

Next week we study WWII and fold an origami crane. We are exploring all the ways to change a piece of paper to make it stronger, unusual, or artistic.

5th Grade to Study WWII

5th graders will be thinking about these questions when we study WWII:

• What can we learn from the past?
• Why do people fight?
• What is worth fighting for?

Our focus will be the end of WWII and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We will visit the Peace Memorials online and fold paper cranes for peace.
Here are a few links kids can use for research:

• Infoplease: The Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Kids Web Japan
• Sadako Sasaki
• America's Story from America's Library: Jump Back in Time
  

3rd Graders Arrive at Pence

3rd grade Challenge began with a paperclip and will continue next week to the Zippy Clippy invention!
We forgot to answer the question of the day: Why is space black?
New question of the day: What causes claustrophobia?

More next week about 4th and 5th grades.

Excited for Classes to Start!

Challenge classes begin next week! In the meantime, I discovered a wonderful way to introduce a topic using an online newspaper and web guide for children called DOGOnews. Just type engineering in the search box and the following articles appear: Engineering.
Better yet, here is an example of one of the articles from the engineering search:

DOGOnews also includes many excellent sites for kids like 27/7 Science from Lawrence Hall of Science.

That's all for now. Be back next week with news from the classroom.