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.