11/18

SCIENCE:
New TableTeams today! The students took a minute to organize their roles in their new team and then Bryson opened the class with prayer. Working together, we created a Thanksgiving MadLib that had the students rolling while the class put together a Thanksgiving prayer journal. The students can use this journal to collect their prayers of gratitude. We reviewed our reading about the Hydrosphere and practiced a song about the water cycle. We noted some fun fact about water here on earth including the fact that we don't get any more water than what is already here, 70% of the earth is made of it and 97% of the water on earth is saltwater. Next, we set up an experiment that can be completed at home. We designed a plastic bag to reesmble the water cycle of our world. This included "collection" (lakes and oceans), "evaporation" (from our heat source the sun), "condensation" (clouds), "precipitation" (rain/snow/sleet), and "runoff". At home you can fill about an inch on the bottom of these bags with warm to hot water (not boiling) and zip it up. Tape it to a window and observe the water cycle in action! Feel free to add a drop or two of blue food dye if you'd like. We watched a Brain Pop video about the water cycle and and headed out to recess.

GEOGRAPHY:

We learned how to say hello in German ("Guten Morgen") and then jumped right into our European Escape Room. While they worked, the students enjoyed a taste of Gouda cheese straight from Holland (by way of Trader Joes). We had some BIG fans of the cheese. They worked so hard during classtime reading their passages about Europe, answering the questions and decoding the puzzles! Most groups were able to unlock the safe and find their passports - way to go! Each student also recieved a worksheet for their specific country project as well as two cutouts to use on their poster if they'd like. To finish off class the students wrote one thing they learned about Europe today on the whiteboard.

IEW:

Our memory verse this week was about taking our requests to God with Thanksgiving. The song had the kids dancing and we were able to talk through how our good God knows what is good for our hearts. Gratitude, not money or things, is actually the key to contentment and so our God wants us to ask and pray and not worry about anything! We can do that by casting our cares on Him and practicing gratitude. We completed the Story Sequence KWO for Section II of Damocles together and then began brainstormed adjectives, verbs, and -ly words as I passed back the "Ants and the Grasshoppers" Final Drafts. These Final Drafts should be put in a clear sheet protector in their IEW notebook that is kept at home. We will be bringing them in for Open House so it will be helpful to store them in the notebook when they are returned in class. We put on our "proofreading caps" and went hunting for banned words in the original Damocles section II before we left for the Thanksgiving Potluck.

We missed you Diego, Evan, Isaac, and Jessie!