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.