5/12

Science: Be the moon, reflect the Son. This was the basis of our Science lesson today. Reflect the Light of the world. Hudson opened our day with prayer and we jumped right in with a devotional and short video highlighting beautiful facts and images about our moon. The students recalled the most interesting information from the video before sketching their moon observations from the month on the white board. We observed how the moon opens like a book (left to right) as it moves from New to Full and back to New. We noted how this is a process and moves slowly, not instantly from one phase to another. Then we reviewed the names of the faces (waxing, waning, crescent, gibbous, new, full). To let these terms set in, we used a freeze dance song to practice our own original “moon” dance moves. Finally, we continued our work on our Solar System Project by learning about and coloring the two largest planets: Jupiter and Saturn. We listened to a StoryBots song about the planets and decided it would be fun if a few students each memorized a part of the song. Here’s the link and volunteers:

Bryson - Sun

Isaac - Saturn

Brielle - Earth

Kaden - Neptune

Nixon - Uranus

Evan - Mercury

Brendan - Jupiter

Rocco - Mars

Lily R - Venus

Bryson brought donuts for his birthday today so everyone enjoyed them during our break...delicious!

*Total Lunar Eclipse THIS SUNDAY night (May 15th/16th). Check out the virtual telescope at the bottom of this article: skyandtelescope.org

Geography: We continued our North America expedition today as we explored its landmarks. Each team was given 4-5 landmarks to learn about and shared one of them with the class as a whole. Then, we played our last World Landmark Bingo for the year. The students are really getting good at recognizing these global marvels, but what they were truly curious about was what snack would mark their sheets. I spoke with them about the diversity of America and its uniqueness in the world. Sometimes this is referred to as the “salad bowl.” They were very concerned they would be marking their page with lettuce, but I assured them that America was not known for its healthy diet, so instead we had a “bowl” of various delicious treats all mixed as one (potato chips, mini chocolate chip cookies, candy, chocolate chips, etc). Each students received a (small) amount to mark their boards and every student was able to get a BINGO! Our last presentations are next week!!!

IEW: I returned the Braille drafts to the students and collected any remaining final draft notebooks. Miss Chelsea walked the students through a lesson on using questions to develop an outline for a paragraph. The students observed her creating a mind map on the board about playing BINGO using questions like Who? What? Where? When? To help guide her thinking. They were then able to choose their own favorite activity and worked to use the questions to create an outline for a paragraph they will complete this week. Some finished their outline early, so we played a banned word version of Wordle to review the boring words we should avoid in our writing. Don’t forget, open house is next Friday (5/20). Looking forward to seeing you all and highlighting the hard work the students have done this year.