It's hard to believe November is already here! Between our field trip this week and Halloween, the week was filled with much excitement and activity. I encourage you to view the photos this week as a slide show (click on any photo to open the slide show view, and then scroll through from there using your arrows or mouse) -- particularly the photos from our field trip, so that you and your child can see the details in the rock photos. A big thank you to Takuto's mom and Nick's mom for joining us on this field trip, and for sharing photos. We were broken up into four groups, so most of my photos are of what my own group observed. Each group came back with their own findings and stories! Also, huge thanks to Laura Phang & Anna Grzymala-Busse for being such fantastic room parents and organizing the wonderful Halloween Party for the children! Thank you to everyone who sent in the lovely snacks and also to those who came to join in the fun.
On to our week!
On Monday, Mr. Sczyzgiel came to visit to prepare us for our Wednesday field trip to the Gravel Pit. He got the children very excited about rocks in this short time, and was able to answer some questions about special rocks the children have already started bringing in from home. Mr. Sczyzgiel introduced the children to the three main categories of rocks: Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary, which we will be diving into in the coming weeks.
We have also begun our exploration of rocks through literacy, with three wonderful books:
Conrad & Savannah each shared rocks from home, with special stories to go with them:
Fox Science Preserve Gravel Pit
Mr. Sczyzgiel's classroom is the bus! He taught us the entire 25 minute drive to and from the gravel pit, and passed around his own rock specimens.
Looking for rocks:
Writing with limestone and sandstone! And the children shouted "It's just like chalk!!!"
Fossils of shells:
Using a magnet to look for small meteorite, with success!
Examining an igneous rock:
Stripes give us clues about what category of rock they fall into:
The land where the gravel pit is use to be a forest before it was dug up, which is starting to grow back. But the children were even more fascinated to learn that long ago, where we stood was actually covered by water!
Fascinating information about the arrival of the boulders we saw:
Today, this metamorphic boulder that arrived through glacial migration also doubles as a rock slide!
Some more information on the landscape and preserve can be found in the links below:
Back at Angell, we used part of the afternoon to reflect on our trip during Writer's Workshop. The children had an open-ended assignment to choose one or two rocks to inspire their writing. Some wrote poems, others wrote personal narratives about our field trip, others wrote rock facts they learned, and others wrote fictional stories about a boy and how he found his favorite rock, or a group of pet rocks that come to life. Who knew that rocks could inspire such creativity?
We also created a quite extensive rock word wall!
In Math this week we worked with geoboards for the first time:
We worked a lot with base ten blocks as a hands on way to reinforce the concept of place value and exchanging tens for ones:
This week we also worked on picture graphs and bar graphs. The students even made a human bar graph to represent the number of pockets they each had on their clothing.
(I tried photographing it, but I'm just not tall enough!)
HALLOWEEN!
Winding down the week with a game of chess on a rainy Friday afternoon:
(Some of the children would vote for indoor recess every day if they could!)
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