Mr. John's Corner:

Line Time Lessons

March roared in like a lion with spring like weather.  We had a chance to go outside which was very nice for the students and the teachers.  The songs the birds sang while outside went along with our weekly theme of musical instruments.  We learned about the four major families of instruments.  We learned of the woodwind family.  The instruments in the woodwind family were originally made from wood and you blow into them to make music (hence, the name woodwind). Some instruments in this family are flutes, oboes, and clarinets. We discovered the brass family and instruments such as the bassoon, trumpet, and tuba are made from a metal called brass.  We talked about the string family and how the guitar, violin, and cello are part of this family.  By far the favorite family was the percussion family.  The more popular instruments in this family were drums, triangle, and rhythm sticks.  We discovered we could use just about anything we could bang together and it would be a percussion instrument.  We could use our hands, stomping on the ground, or use trash can lids. I want to thank Julia's mom for playing her trumpet for our class. I also wanted to say how amazed we were hearing Mia play the cello and demonstrating to the class different ways to play the instrument. She also gave a great lesson on the parts of the cello. 

The class went green for a week learning about recycling, conserving energy, and pollution.  I explained pollution was anything which made our environment dirty.  We also learned about littering.  Littering can be people throwing trash on the side of the road or dropping a candy wrapper in the woods.  We now know that we need to put trash in the appropriate container.  We learned air pollution is created by factory smokestacks and car exhaust.  Water Pollution is caused by factories dumping chemicals in the water or people throwing trash in the water instead of putting it in a trash can.  Ms. Michele created two water bottles comparing clean water and dirty water.  One bottle was clear clean water and the other had dirt, plastic, and other trash.  We asked the children which bottle they would drink or swim in. The 3 R's were introduced and now we all know to reduce, reuse and recycle!  We thought of ways to conserve energy.  We came up with turning off lights in rooms we are not in or turning off the TV if we are not watching it.  We thought of turning off the water while we are brushing our teeth or turning down the heat and wearing a sweater instead.  During the Kindergarten lesson a student realized the room was just as light with the lights off as it was if the lights were on.  Now we do our kindergarten lesson without lights. The class did an art project by making an owl from a paper plate with the slogan "Give a hoot, don't pollute."

We ended the month by learning about the oceans and how the earth is about 75% water.  Oceans give us food, water and help produce oxygen.  We learned what animals live in the ocean.  Animals such as dolphins, whales, all kinds of fish, starfish and crabs all live in the ocean.  We learned how coral reefs are made from skeletons of millions of dead sea creatures and provide food and shelter for our underwater friends.  The classroom was turned into an underwater habitat when the jellyfish art project invaded the room.


Cultural Subjects
The children learned how to count to ten in Swedish.  They can now count to 10 in thirteen languages.  

On March 17th we walked into our room to find tables on their sides, chairs tipped over, mats thrown all over the room, and the number rods spread on the floor.  I then told the story of the leprechaun and how they were short creatures that looked like old men.  It is told that they are mischievous and have a pot of gold.  If you catch a leprechaun you must never take your eyes off of them or they will disappear with their gold.  The leprechaun that visited our classroom left gold candy coins.

During spring break our amaryllis finally bloomed after 2 years growing shoots and nothing else.  The bulb was given to me by a student 2 years ago and it has been fun watching it grow and bloom.  

 
Science
This month's science experiment dealt with buoyancy.  We started with 2 oranges (1 unpeeled and 1 peeled).  The unpeeled orange was larger and heavier.  When we placed both oranges in a pail of water the peeled orange sank and the unpeeled orange floated.  We found it a bit strange but there was an explanation.  The unpeeled orange had air trapped inside and the peeled orange had no air to keep it afloat.  

Kindergarten Lesson
We started the month learning about fractions.  We worked with the material called the fractional insets and went on to work on fraction worksheets.  We learned fractions are just dividing things into equal parts.  Things can be divided into 2 pieces (halves), 3 pieces (thirds)......even a million pieces (millionths).  Almost anything can be divided equally.  We divided triangles, squares, rectangles, pizzas, candy bars, and even the class.  We have 11 students in the class.  Each student was 1/11 of the class.  We have 4 boys in the class.  We learned the boys in the class are 4/11 of the students and the girls are equal to 7/11.   

We ended the month by identifying shapes.  We are well acquainted with the quatrefoil, curvilinear triangle, ellipse, and oval.  We know that a quadrilateral is a shape with four sides.  We found that we have some special quadrilaterals such as squares, rectangles, trapezoids, parallelograms, rhombus, and the chevron.  We know the triangle has 3 sides and investigated further to find out that a triangle that has 3 equal sides is called an equilateral triangle.  A triangle with 2 equal sides is called an Isosceles triangle. And finally a triangle with no equal sides is called a scalene triangle.  Counting to 10 in Greek came in handy when we learned about pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, octagons, nonagons, and decagons.   

-Mr. John     

Ms. Courtney's Corner:  

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