Star Student and a Birthday, Cooperative Animals, Enemy Pies, And a Human Timeline

Star Student Natalie!



Star Student and Birthday Boy, Patrick!


Human Timeline




Here is a synopsis of the past few weeks:

Patrick was our Star Student last week. He likes to make stop-animation movies and would like to be an engineer when he grows up. Patrick turned 8 on Monday too! Congratulations Patrick! This week our Star Student is Natalie. Natalie loves to ride horses and would like to be a dentist when she grows up.

The 2D Stars worked on making recipes for Enemy Pie. The pie turns an enemy into a friend. We read a story by the same name, Enemy Pie, in which the main character works with his dad to share an enemy pie with a new boy on the block. After reading the book, we brainstormed ingredients, cooking/measurement words to include in our recipes. We wrote our recipes and created enemy pies out of Model Magic. They looked delicious!

Working together, the 2D Stars created Cooperative Animals. Each student chose an animal to draw. Then he/she discussed with his/her small group which part of that animal he/she would draw. The result was an imaginary creature with many different parts. In our class we had the Bunhorsoris, the Firepigelifint, the Daasoesrases, the Horwalbatpenguin, and Yocotama. Quite an eclectic group!

Our study of Fossils and Dinosaurs has progressed. We have now made a paper time line of when the dinosaurs lived and when humans evolved in relation to dinosaurs. We have worked on fossil imprints and dinosaur stories. We have also worked on similes and synonyms using dinosaurs as our inspirations.

The Stars have rocketed through addition and subtraction over the first few weeks of school. We are now moving into graphing. Be armed with data on your favorites (ice cream, TV show, sports team) in the upcoming weeks!

The

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Today the 2D Stars began a creative writing project. The Stars worked on a pre-writing activity to help them organize their thoughts about what else? Having a dinosaur for a pet! Ask your 2D Star what he/she would do with his/her dino pal! The Stars also practiced subtraction, worked on a map of Ohio, took a look at a variety of fossils and listened to an Open Court story called, Fossils Tell of Long Ago. It was a great day!

Dinosaurs and Fossils Begins...

We began our study of dinosaurs and fossils yesterday. We listened to a fantasy story called, The Dinosaur Who Lived in My Backyard and also partner read it. We independently answered questions on the story using our Open Court books. We started the first section of our KWL chart. We learned that the K in KWL stands for "What you know." Tomorrow we will complete the second section of our chart-the W-with "What we want to know" questions. At the end of our theme, we will fill out the final section, "What we learned" about dinosaurs and fossils.

In the morning, the 2D Stars learned that all the land on earth used to be connected. This supercontinent was called Pangaea. We also made a human time line that took us back to when the dinosaurs lived. We started with a group of students representing present day, "NOW." Then we took two steps forward to show the time when humans first appeared. Each step represents 1 million years. The rest of the class continued walking 150 more steps to show when the last dinosaurs lived on earth. And finally, a smaller group walked 150 more steps to represent the time when the first dinosaurs appeared on earth. Our time line was so huge that we went past the edge of the track in both directions. Wow! 302 million years is a really long time. Dinosaurs are also really old say the 2D Stars!

Community Day

Building with Blocks and Pre-K B Buddies!

Building with unifix cubes and base-ten blocks:







The 2D Stars are paired with 2C and Pre-K B to be buddies this year! Check out our first photos where we played outside and colored buddy pictures: