Merry Christmas!

Well, I have made it through the crazy Christmas season. The 5th graders have created 6 different ornaments, successfully completed a Secret Santa activity, sang in a holiday concert, and had an exciting Christmas party - including a surprise visit by Santa.

I am kind of happy to forget about school for a few days and just focus on my own family and friends. I might even read a book that isn't school related.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season filled with good food and fellowship. (And don't forget about the Social Studies projects that are due on January 9th!)

6th Grade Chemistry Christmas Party

For our last day of science in 2011, we had a chemistry party. We made borax crystal snowflakes and snowy trees out of laundry bluing and ammonnia. We also made a great big tub of ooblek.

What is ooblek? It is just ordinary corn starch and water, but when mixed together it makes the greatest slimy mess ever! Ooblek is called a non-newtonian liquid - which means it acts like a solid when firm pressure is applied to it, but it is also a liquid and will run between your fingers. Each student got to spend some time walking across and then sinking into the ooblek.

As a special gift from me, the class got a bag of candy chemistry experiments - pop rocks, zotz, and wintergreen lifesavers (who doesn't like making sparks in your mouth?!)

It's Christmas Time in Hill City

It was Christmas program day. Oof! That means practice in the morning and the "real thing" in the afternoon. It means lots of little girls in pretty dresses and boys in ties. It also means I didn't get any prep time today and had to wait 4 1/2 hours to go to the bathroom.

This is a hard-working, musically-talented class. Many of my kids have been giving up their recesses to come in and work on singing and playing their instruments with Mr. Kneeland. And boy, can you tell! Some years I have to play "Name that Tune" when the band starts, but this year the songs were loud, together and very recognizable!

The Two Little Pigs

Sigrid's mom brought in two baby pigs this morning. She shared that their mother wasn't taking care of them, so now Sigrid is spending a lot of time helping to raise them. They wandered around our room and checked everyone out. They seemed perfectly happy in our classroom. When it was time to put them back into their carrier, they sure made a loud racket. I am sure the whole school heard them. It was fun to learn all about raising pigs and Sigrid's mom even left us some farming math problems to solve for extra credit!

ICC Engineering

Today four engineering students from Itasca Community College came in to our 6th grade science class to teach the kids about engineering. After talking about different types of engineers and the design process, the 6th graders built towers out of styrofoam and skewers. The goal was to build the tallest tower that could withstand a wind. The towers were tested with a large fan. We will be working on an engineering unit in January, so this was a great introduction!

Studying Plants

The 5th graders have been studying plants. We had a (very difficult) test yesterday on plant parts. Today we started learning about the different kinds of plants.

The first group we will study are the nonvascular plants. These include the mosses and ferns. Today we took a careful look at moss. Tomorrow we will learn about ferns.

Every year I think I should start this unit earlier so I could actually go out and find moss and ferns before they die off for the winter. I always end up buying ferns at a florist, but I did manage to chip away from the icy ground some pieces of moss from under my deck yesterday.