Merry Christmas!

This is our classroom tree. Notice the winter theme? The glue guns and paint brushes have been busy this month as we have made wooden sleds, snowboarders out of pine cones, glue snowmen, yarn stocking hats, beaded snowflakes, and golf ball snowmen. These are going home as gifts for family members.

Happy holidays from my class!

A Real Minnesota Winter

This is how the kids in our elementary school have been spending P.E. class this week. Good old fashioned sliding down a hill at breakneck speeds, wind in their hair, snow in their faces.

We have P.E. right away in the morning, so on this particular snowy day the kids came in covered with snow from head to toe. They then proceeded to take all their gear off and stuff it into their lockers. Two hours later it was recess time and guess who had to put on wet snowpants, wet gloves and wet boots? Yup, my kids. They didn't seem to mind and had a great time outside at recess too.

Of course, two hours later they put their now soaking outside gear back on to go home. I hope it got dried out during the night.

Angiosperm Buffet

The second group of plants we are studying are the angiosperms - plants with flowers and fruits. Today each fifth grader was given a different fruit to cut open and explore the seeds inside. We had a kiwi, watermelon, cantaloupe, pomegranate, pear, star fruit, mango, persimmon, apple, pineapple, orange, cucumber, lemon, tomato, green pepper, Asian pear, lime, grapefruit and avocado.

It's always fun to get into the fruit verses vegetable debate, and it takes some convincing to get fifth graders to believe tomatoes, cucumbers, and green peppers are really fruits. They now know that a fruit is a fleshy covering for seeds. If it has seeds, it's a fruit!

After our dissection, I cut up all the fruits for the kids to eat. Many of them tried something new today.

What's a Gymnosperm?

The fifth graders have been studying plants in science. We are starting with the gymnosperms - plants that don't have fruits or flowers. A conifer would fall in this category, so I brought in the eight native conifers to northern Minnesota. The kids had to identify them with field guides.

Usually this is a difficult task for fifth graders because they call every tree with needles a "pine" tree. (Growing up in northwestern Minnesota, we called every evergreen a "spruce" tree.) When I tell them there actually are only three real kinds of pine trees where we live, they get a little confused.

I was pretty impressed with my class this year. They knew a jackpine from a balsam fir and even figured out the difference between a black spruce and a white spruce (neither one is black or white). I've got quite a bunch of budding little naturalists!

Native Art

We have been studying different cultural regions of Native Americans in history class. After learning about the Northwest Coast Indians we created two fabulous totem poles that have been keeping watch outside our classroom.

The Southwest Indians used kachinas to teach their children about important spirits and so we created our own kachina dolls. I love how the students all started with a toilet paper tube and a wadded up piece of paper, but with a little paper mache and paint, each kachina doll is a unique creation.

Our art budget was cut last year and so the classroom teachers are teaching art this year. One of the Minnesota art standards involves learning about multicultural art and there also is a social studies standard on learning about Native American groups. I guess this is my way of "killing two birds with one stone," so to speak.

5th Grade Book Club

Every year I start our 5th grade book club with this book. It is an oldie but a goodie. The Cay by Theodore Taylor is about a blind boy stranded on an island with an old man and a cat.

Fridays are our discussion days, and this class loves to argue, debate and discuss the book. I sit at a student's desk, participating on equal terms with the kids. We talk about black and white relations, what it would feel like to be blind, and whether or not it is okay for boys to cry. It's powerful stuff.

After we are done with the book we watch the movie. Now this movie is something a former teacher taped off of an After School Special back in 1980. It stars James Earl Jones in what must be one of his first acting jobs. It's pretty bad, and I don't just mean the quality of the tape. The kids love to debate why they left out a part or why a certain scene was filmed in a certain way. I always give my "Never watch a movie before you read the book" speech.

I have looked for a DVD of this movie on the internet and it doesn't seem to exist. I think James Earl Jones had something to do with that...

Phenologist Visits

This week John Latimer visited our science classes. John is a rural mail carrier who also happens to have a radio program on KAXE (91.7) radio in Grand Rapids. His program is called the Phenology Show and is aired every Tuesday morning.

So what is phenology you ask? It is the study of how nature changes as related to climate. It is when my class notices the first snow bunting of the year. Or realizes Hill Lake has frozen over. Every day in science class we keep track of all these events and we report them to John. One of my students gets to be on his radio program reporting our weekly observations.

John came in to talk about how to be a better observer. We all walk through our busy lives without noticing what is going on outside our door. My hope is to help kids become aware of what is happening in nature every day. I also hope to build an appreciation for all things natural. I want the fifth grade boy to think, "What a beautiful bird! I wonder what kind it is?" Not, "There's a bird! I wonder if I can hit it with my bb gun."

Thanks, John, for taking a day off of work to come talk to my class. We really appreciate it.

5th Graders Go High Tech

The fifth graders are studying the 5 kingdoms of life in science class. You know... bacteria, protista, animalia, fungi, and plantae. They have been divided into groups and each group must research and create a Power Point presentation to teach the class about their kingdom.

I have done this project for many years, but the end result was always an old fashioned poster (that is so 1990s). This year I decided to teach them how to use Power Point. Here's a little secret...I have never used Power Point myself. I have played with it a little bit and it seemed kind of easy. Kids these days are so techno-savy that I knew they could figure it out.

I am very pleased to say that with a little trial and error (and a couple of kids who had used it before), the presentations turned out pretty amazing.

Thank you, Mrs. Crabeesub!

It was our Halloween party on Friday. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling well and had to go home sick. Fortunately, Mrs. Crabeesub was available and came in to sub for me. We don't see her around much. It seems she only subs on Haloween afternoons. I guess she is too busy with all her volunteer work and knitting club and such.

Apparently she wasn't very happy with all the partying and hoopla that goes with a Halloween party and tried to give everyone worksheets. Maybe they didn't have Halloween way back when she was a kid.

We love to read!

I love fifth grade books. When I was a kid we didn't have many choices. Little House on the Prairie. Beverly Cleary. Charlotte's Web. I guess we call those classics now.

The number of books currently published for kids is phenomenal. Every month when I look through the Scholastic Book Order, there are a dozen new books available. Of course I can't resist buying them and as a result our classroom library shelves are overflowing.

My class this year loves to read. They always groan when I tell them independent reading time is over. I have many students eager to give Book Talks each day. I hope this love of reading stays with them their whole lives.

6th Grade Chemistry

In High School I didn't like chemistry much. In fact, I avoided taking Chemistry II by taking a class called Office Practice where we learned how to type (on a typewriter!) invoices and bills of lading. Boy, that's a class I have never used!

Now I am teaching chemistry to 6th graders and I wish I had taken that chemistry class in high school. I spend a lot of time gaining background knowledge before I teach my lessons and I must admit now that I think chemistry is pretty interesting.

The 6th graders start out learning about matter. We work with balances to find the mass of an object and graduated cylinders to find the volume. Our latest lessons have been on density.

The fun part of chemistry is the "wow factor." Take this lesson on liquid density, for instance. Given four mystery liquids, the kids found the density of each one and then layered them on top of one another. Everyone was fairly impressed, I think.

Jello Cells

Okay, I must admit this is a bit hypocritical of me after my last post. On Friday we made cell models out of jello and lots of candy. Healthy? No. But this was all in the name of science.

The 5th graders have been studying animal and plant cells for a few days now. We have looked at diagrams in our book and on the Internet. The students have drawn their own diagrams all nicely labeled with the cell parts. Today we made models out of jello. I am hoping this will really help them remember the parts of a cell.

Here's how it works. For the animal cell a plastic bag represents the cell membrane and the red jello is the cytoplasm. The plant cell has a plastic cup to represent the cell wall (it's rigid) and green jello for the cytoplasm. The organelles are a large jawbreaker for the nucleus, Mike and Ikes for the mitochondrion, and marshmallows for the vacuoles (many small for the animal cell and one large for the plant cell). Oh yeah, and we can't forget the green licorice pieces representing the chloroplasts in the plant cell.

It tasted as disgusting as it sounds, but the kids didn't seem to care.

Up next... we will look at the real deal under high powered microscopes. An elodea leaf will show off some pretty nice plant cells and we will get animal cells from the inside of our cheeks.

Just a note for any parents reading this. The cell quiz is on Wednesday, October 13. A study guide will go home on Monday.

Nutrition Lady

The nutrition lady came today. Her real name is Jolene Gansen and she works for the Aitkin County Extension Service as a Nutrition Education Assistant. My students just call her the nutrition lady.

Jolene will be visiting us four times this fall to talk about things such as reading nutrition labels and how to choose healthy foods. I feel like these lessons are way more important than learning about long division, the Revolutionary War, or the difference between a plant and animal cell. Kids just don't think about what they eat...if it tastes good, they will eat it, even if it is loaded with saturated fat, salt and food coloring. Hopefully Jolene's lessons will help them to start thinking about what they put in their bodies.

Of course right now, the kids just like that she brings snacks. Today we had carrots with ranch dressing. Every student gobbled up their carrots like candy.

Minnesota Mike

A famous archaeologist came to our classroom yesterday. Was it Indiana Jones? Nope, it was Minnesota Mike!

Mike Magner is an archaeologist for the Minnesota DNR and he came to our room to talk about the history of Minnesota. The 5th graders made a living timeline as they learned about our land thousands of years ago. Mike brought in spears, an atlatl, stone tools, bones, and pottery to show the different ways people have made tools through the years.

This ties right in to our current history unit on the ancient Americans.

Meet Skip

This is Skip. He is going to be spending time on a selected student's desk every now and then. Skip stands for Statue of Kindness, Integrity, and Perseverance. Any student who shows these traits may earn the privilege of taking care of Skip for a day or two. The kids seem really excited about this. It's amazing what a 25 cent garage sale knick-knack can do for motivating a bunch of 5th graders.

Looking Back at Summer

Even though we have only been in school for 3 weeks, summer seems like a distant memory. We took some time last week to design some pretty awesome sunglasses displaying all our summer fun. My class had some great summer experiences including trips to the Mall of America, Grand Marais, and the Apostle Islands.

Officially, summer ends today. The autumnal equinox arrives at 10:09 tonight. I am still hoping the weather will turn a little summer-y in the next few weeks. We have some important plant lessons coming up in science, and a hard frost would wipe out our specimens in the forest.

Adopt A Tree

My fifth and sixth grade science students started their Adopt A Tree project on Friday. It was a beautiful day to be out in the woods by our playground. I have been teaching at Hill City school for 16 years and I still can't believe all the wonderful nature that is literally right outside my classroom door.

Each student selected a tree and did some measuring, observing and collecting. They will continue to visit their trees all through the year, watching for changes throughout the seasons.

Metamorphosis

We have now released 19 butterflies since school has started. We are keeping track of the date, time, and gender of each butterfly as they emerge from their chrysalis. I randomly select a student to name and release each one. This lovely male was released this afternoon. I think his name is Skippy. He kind of looks like a Skippy, doesn't he?

Yesterday we released six butterflies and as we were heading back into the classroom I noticed Mr. Mikles' 7th graders with butterfly nets catching specimens for their zoology class. Those poor butterflies probably didn't get very far. Fortunately the 7th graders were doing catch and release and it probably only delayed the Mexico journey by a few days.

Hopes and Dreams

Each fall I start the year with a Hopes and Dreams activity. We all think back to last year and what went well and what was hard and difficult. The students then choose a goal for the year. The most difficult part of this activity is narrowing the goals down to something do-able. I get a lot of "I want to be better at Math," when I am hoping for "I want to get faster at my math facts." This is a difficult concept for most 5th graders to grasp and I occasionally need to do some one-on-one counseling to get them where they need to be.

We end this activity with an exciting (and rather loud) celebration. We all read our hopes and dreams and celebrate the teamwork that will take place as we work together to reach these goals. Our hopes and dreams are written on stars that go up on a bulletin board in our classroom.

It sounds easy here. In reality, it is exhausting. Or maybe my exhaustion is just from the first three days of school with 18 very busy 10 year olds. I'm going to enjoy this first weekend of the school year!

Looking for Caterpillars

I had a great day meeting all my parents and students at our first day of school conferences today. I just think the first day of school transition is so much easier when we get this one-on-one time to talk about expectations, etc. My voice is sore and my head is aching, but it was a good day.

I spent this evening scouring all the ditches near my house looking for monarch caterpillars. During the summer they are plentiful and we can find them by the dozens, but this time of year it's a little harder. I have over 20 chrysalises (what is the plural for chrysalis?) in my classroom and I let four butterflies go today. I want to show the class all the stages and so caterpillars are a must. I ended up with only three caterpillars on my journeys tonight and they will have to do. I guess we will be in groups of six tomorrow for observation time in science class. We just have to take what we can get from Mother Nature.

Ready or not...here they come!

Tomorrow is the first day of school. As a child, I was a nervous wreck on that first day. As a teacher, I'm not a wreck but I'm always a little bit nervous.

I have been working hard the last two weeks getting ready. The room is clean and organized. My library is (sort of) in alphabetical order. Pencils are sharpened. The desks are clean inside and out. Now those ornery 5th graders are going to come and mess it all up!

I'm just kidding, of course. Those fifth graders are why I do what I do. They will be my life for the next 172 days. Ready or not, here they come!