Science Fair and Fun with Literature

We had a GREAT science fair last week!  It was so nice to see all the kids excited, inviting parents and others to see their projects, and for the Bumblebee parents to get together too! One bumblebee student took his project to the South Sound Regional Science Fair at PLU and won second place for his age division!  The best part of the science fair this year was really listening to the students share their project.  For the early grades, it's not that important to be an elaborate, unique project. I want to see something that they could confidently tell me what they wanted to find out (question), what they thought might happen (hypothesis) and explain what did happen (data and conclusion). This language and process of learning is used all the time in the real world! We are giving them the skills at 5 and 6 years old to be amazing problem solvers, and to realize that learning doesn't stop because you left the classroom, or even graduated school!

 

In addition, we have been having fun with literature!  We have been reading Pete the Cat, Elephant and Piggie and Elmer.  We created magic sunglasses to make our moods better, wrote our own comics with speech bubbles, and think about what makes each of us "one of a kind." Today we read "The Wind Blew" by Pat Hutchins, and designed our own kites (now only if the wind would come on a day I wanted it to we could fly them :) ).

 

"Our cool, magic sunglasses help us see things in a whole new way!"





Rock Science

Over the past few weeks, I have allowed the Bumblebees to guide the next topic.  Based on a ring on my finger, there was much discussion about the type of gem it was.  This sparked an interest in rocks in general.  The students have been bringing their own rocks from home to share, and we have been observing and discovering the different rock types (igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic) and how they are formed. During these observations we are taking notes, measuring and weighing, comparing and contrasting, and finding all sorts of surprises! We use scales, magnifying glasses and microscopes to collect all the information we can and document that in our journals. We even made our own pet rocks, which has sparked some very creative story writing with our new friends!