Rechenka's Eggs AND a little of Star Lab too!

We read the story, Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco.

Old Babushka, known through out all of Moskva for her beautifully painted eggs is preparing her eggs for the Ester Festival when she takes in an injured goose.  She names the goose Rechenka, and they live happily together until one day Rechenka accidentally overturns a basket, breaking all of Babushka's lovingly crafted eggs. 

Ukrainian style eggs are stunningly colored and intricately designed. 

Here are some examples of Ukrainian style eggs.

We made our own Ukrainian style eggs.

Watch Rechenka's Eggs for yourself!

Star Lab

Last week we had the privilege of going to Star Lab!  (Special thanks to Mrs. Vande Voorde for taking time out of her schedule to get trained on Star Lab and for sharing her expertise with all of us at PES.) Inside Star Lab we learned about the different constellations and stories that go along with them.

Here we are waiting to go inside the Star Lab.

When we got back to our classroom, we read another book about constellations. Then, we created our favorite constellation with marshmallows and toothpicks.  They were good enough to eat, but Mrs. Wanke wouldn't let us eat our constellations!

Extra Extra Read all about it!

Here is our first book review using the iMovie app.  We were so excited to see the final product.  We hope you are too!

Lights, Camera, Action

If you walk into our room this week you might just here, "quiet on the set!" That's because we are learning to give book reviews by making a movie using the iMovie app.

 To showcase a few features that students can use when making their movies, I made a movie and a movie trailer of my own. I think I had too much fun!

Stay tuned to see what your little film makers come up with!

What a Week!

We have been learning about the different moon phases.  We started a few weeks ago, when we made the different moon phases out of Oreo cookies! YUMMY

This week we read a non-fiction article about the moon phases.  Then, we played Moon Phases Bingo!  Mrs. Wanke asked us questions about the moon phases based upon the information in the article.  We had to refer back to the article to answer these questions in order to mark the answers on our BINGO card. 

This week Mrs. Wanke stumbled upon a website that would allow us to track the different moon phases.  (Thank you Pinterest!)

You can print up this calendar and record what the moon looks like every night.

If you are interested, chart the moon phases at home. After one complete cycle, 29.5 days, bring your sheet(s) back for a very special prize!

Also, this week we used a lot of different math skills to make a kite!  Unfortunately, they won't actually fly, but boy are they nice to look at.

Mrs. Wanke started off by giving each of us a set of measurements for our kite.  (The height, width, and tail length)  First, we had to draw a line  on our paper to be the height of our kite.  Then, we had to first figure our half of our width, to make sure our kite was symmetrical. After we found half of the width, we place the ruler at the half way mark on the height line and drew a line for the width.  Now we had a big t shape on our paper.  We use our ruler to connect all 4 points together to give us the kite shape.

After our kite shape was created and cut out, we had to make a take according the measurements Mrs. Wanke gave us.  We also had to create a pattern with bows on the kite's tail.  

Lastly, to wrap up our kit project, we had to measure the kite in inches and centimeters, identify the type of patter we created on our tail, verify if our kite was in fact symmetrical, and write an equation using any of the measurements to took from our kite.  

The end product is a beautiful display of kites in the hallway!  They look like they are flying the hallway.