We've been counting down the days to winter break with special activities.  Here are a few pictures of our Abominable Snowman Race and our Snowball Broomstick Relay.  Our class also went caroling in the front office.  They sounded so wonderful that people thought it was the radio playing!

Pluto Demoted:  Our first Socratic Seminar

Today we asked each other open-ended questions about Pluto being demoted to a dwarf planet.  We addressed each other by our last names and arranged our desks into a big circle.  We agreed and disagreed with each other's opinions, but did so in a friendly way.  What do you think, should Pluto still count as a planet?

Decimals and Fractions

We've been working hard to understand decimals.  We created a class chart with all of our different strategies for comparing and thinking about decimals.  The strategies include:

• Writing a place value chart 
• Reading decimals
• "4.5 is four and five tenths or four and a half"
• Building decimals using tools or drawing pictures
• Comparing the decimals to benchmark numbers such as 0, 1/2, and 1
• "I know that 0.3 is closer to 0, because it is less than 0.5 or 1/2"
• Placing numbers on a number line and ordering them from least to greatest

We visited a great website yesterday.  We flew over a Powhatan chiefdom known as Werowocomoco!  We'll be back to this site to explore Jamestown.

National Geographic Jamestown and Werowocomoco

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/05/jamestown/jamestown-standalone

Happy Thanksgiving

Our turkeys are safely in disguise.  Can you guess what we are?  Happy Thanksgiving.  Enjoy the four-day weekend!

Planting Bulbs

 

 
A few of us planted daffodil bulbs.  The bulbs are dormant, or in a state of suspended life.  They will start to grow when they have the right environmental conditions in spring.  Plants and animals adapt to their environment.  Can you name some adaptations the Eastern Woodland Indians made in each of our four seasons?

We visited our mini-friends in preschool.  We read a poem called, "Five Little Pumpkins." Then we helped them color the poem.

These pictures are from our awesome Five Regions Feast!  We enjoyed eating the foods from the Valley and Ridge region, which included chicken nuggets, chicken tacos, chicken soup (poultry), ice cream, and cheese (dairy).  Some of us loved the seafood from the Coastal Plain/Tidewater.  Others enjoyed the "coal"  brownies from the Appalachian Plateau.  Corn and cornbread were enjoyed from the Piedmont region.  We also loved the apple desserts and fruit salad from the Blue Ridge Mountain Region.

Sunshine Finally!

Into which large body of water does the Chesapeake Bay empty?  The Atlantic Ocean!  The Atlantic Ocean was a major transportation link for Europeans traveling to and from the New World.  This picture is from the shores of Dewey Beach on my last day of mini-vacation. 

All of Virginia's rivers empty into which large body of water?  That's right, the Chesapeake Bay.  Here is a picture of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on my trip to Dewey Beach.

Reading Before Bed

Miss Bagnall's nephews love to read.  Can you guess what they'll be for Halloween?

Staying late

Miss Scheurer learning about blogs