Super Science Day Fun!

Yesterday was Science Day! (Laura) It was the best! (Levi) Our first class was taught by Will C.'s dad and was all about cells and chromosomes.(Alexa) Will C.'s dad juggled tennis balls at the end of class. (Robin) Will's dad showed us pictures of Will and his sister, Eloise. (Ivonne) We learned that there are 60-90 trillion cells in your body. (Will C.) We got to watch a little video about cells. (Hazel)  Next we learned about the animals that live in Durham in the NC Wildlife class. (Will G.) We played charades with different animals. (Nicholas) At the Science Fair we saw everyone's science projects. (Josue) Hazel, Lily, George, Will C., Arun, and Laura all did science projects from our class. (Lily) We had a scavenger hunt teamed up with a 5th grader. (George) In Animal Adaptations we learned about how animals adapted over time. (Arun) Seven people went up to use their tools to get food like a bird would. (Abby) In our last class, Snake Measurement, we saw Ms. Wall's ball python snake and learned that it had just eaten 2 rats. (Zelaura) Ms. Wall said that if we petted the snake's stomach we could feel the 2 rats and we also made our own snakes and measured those. (Hazel) The snake's name was Athena. (Levi) Athena was big and long and fat. (Angie) Whenever we touch a snake we should not squeeze it. (Zoe) Ms. Wall showed us Athena's scales. (Sandra) A ball python rolls into a ball when it is scared to protect itself. (Miriam) Our class had fun at Science Day! (Jesica) We had a fun day! (Charlie)

Innovative Instruments!

We were makin' a racket in room 311 this week during research! To wrap up our unit on sound we used all we learned to design and create our own instruments. The kids had a blast planning, creating and even composing songs all about sound! On Thursday we were able to share our instruments by performing our "Sound Songs". We heard great songs by "The Bunny Band", "The Pony Band", "The Wild Raptors" and others. It was so wonderful to see imaginations and knowledge hard at work!

Congratulations!

Today we had our Manatee Awards for the month of February. We enjoyed some dance, drumming and poetry. Congrats go to Lily for excellence in math, Angie for reading, Josue for manatee manners, Robin for science and Alexa for art.

Our class also got a Spanish award for positive behavior!

Also the PTA read-a-thon participants were recognized. Great reading Lily, Arun, Charlie, Angie, Zoe and Hazel!

Black History Month Living Museum

Students from our class did a wonderful job performing in the living museum during the black history month luncheon! They were celebrities for a day!

Art Smarts: Romare Bearden

For Black History Month we studied the NC born artist, Romare Bearden. We looked at some of his prints and learned about his collage style of art. We also learned about how he was inspired by jazz music and poetry because he lived in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance.

We listened to two jazz pieces "Jungle Blues" and "Seabreeze" and drew what the music inspired us to draw. We also picked one of Bearden's pictures and wrote an original piece of poetry.

We also tried a super cool app on our new class iPad that let us create our own Romare Bearden collages!

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