March Madness!

This month is going to be absolutely action packed! I sure hope I can keep up with all the events and activities! 

Monday and Tuesday are World Math Day, which the students started gleefully competing in today, and will resume tomorrow.

Wednesday is Dr. Seuss' birthday. I've lined up Ben and Matt from KNIX and Matthew Blades from The Mix 96.9 to come in as celebrity readers. There will be a few other surprise readers throughout the day and other fun activities! We will also literally be Reading Across America, doing a Green Eggs and Ham reader's theater with our pen-pal class in Massachusetts via Skype.

Wednesday and Thursday are the very first World Spelling Day, (spanning multiple days due to time zones) which based on the reaction of the class, will surely be as big of a hit as World Math Day, which we have been participating in for years.

Friday is school photo day and it is the day our class photo will be taken. Order forms were sent home last week. Please return the form by Friday if you are interested in ordering the group picture.

This is only week one. March is going to be one wild ride!

Bowl of Chocolate Ellen Teb-BITS, Anyone?

Just a quick reminder that the cereal box book report is due Monday, February 28. The students and I have been communicating throughout the duration of this assignment and it sounds like everyone is in good shape. Students that finished early and presented last week all did a beautiful job!

Many students completed the Super Bonus Challenge this past week, and brought in amazing presidential presentations. So far we have seen a model of a Abe Lincoln's log cabin, an incredible president themed board game, a creative timeline on a scroll and several posters! We ran out of time for every student to present, but we will get to them all next week.

James and the Giant....Cabbage?

We had a fabulous time with our Third Grade Buddies this week, pretending we got swallowed up by enormous cabbages, similar to James in Roald Dahl's classic, James and the Giant Peach.

We had a discussion about the book and watched a very brief video clip of the movie. Then we substituted a giant cabbage for a giant peach and students worked with their buddies to write a story about their adventure living in a monstrous cabbage. Every student got to keep a cabbage plant to plant at home. Details about the this interesting cabbage program can be found here.
Happy gardening!

Cotton

As much as we tried, we could not cram all five Cs into the festivities on Monday. We were just too busy! Today we learned about cotton.

Students worked with a partner on an iPad researching cotton. They found interesting facts about cotton  including the origin of the word, how and where cotton plants grow and the history of the cotton gin.

Students then wrote the word "cotton" in large, block letters and glued cotton balls over the lines to form the word.

Once the word was clear, students copied their favorite cotton facts onto their paper.

Who would guess there is so much to learn about cotton, an important piece of Arizona's heritage?

Citrus

What would a celebration of Arizona's birthday be like without some fresh citrus to sample?

Thanks to our MANY generous donors, we had plenty of grapefruit, lemons and oranges to sample.

The taste test was optional, but those who participated were required to write about the differences in the citrus fruits.

Some students thought the lemons were much too sour! Almost everyone seemed to enjoy oranges and the grapefruit got mixed reviews.

Overall, it was lots of fun to learn about different variety of citrus grown right in some of our very own backyards! Thanks again to everyone who sent in fresh fruit!

Copper

We learned that pennies get dull over time because the copper in the pennies reacts with the air to form copper oxide. Pure copper metal is bright and shiny, but the oxide is dull and sometimes greenish.

We dipped our dull pennies in a mixture of salt and vinegar, and the acetic acid from the vinegar dissolved the copper oxide, making our pennies brighter and shinier!

The salt served as a catalyst and sped up the chemical reaction.

Mrs. Woodard's husband drilled holes in 40 pennies, so all of our students were able to create a penny necklace as a little souvenir from our copper lesson.

Happy 99th Birthday Arizona!

Tomorrow we will kick off our week with lots of Arizona themed festivities!

We will be checking on the weather and climate conditions all over the state, tasting and writing about citrus, learning about the cotton industry, while writing the word "cotton" using cotton balls, dissolving copper oxide from pennies and creating penny necklaces and reading about the difference between cattle and cows. 

The spelling list will be Arizona themed and we will also be solving some challenging math word problems involving The 5 Cs. Speaking of "The 5 Cs", I have been going crazy trying to figure out if the plural of C should include an apostrophe or not. My initial instinct said no apostrophe since the C is not showing possession nor is it a contraction. However, "Cs" looks strange and "C's" looks a bit more polished. All over the internet I keep finding it written as "The 5 C's" including on the Arizona Department of the State's webpage. I have been so frustrated trying to figure out which way is correct I emailed Ken Bennett's office asking why they include the apostrophe on their website and explaining why I think otherwise. From what I can tell, no apostrophe is needed because the C is plural and the only time to use an apostrophe with a capital letter is when the meaning would be unclear otherwise. For example if we were talking about As on a report card, depending on where the word As is used in the sentence, it could look like the word "as." If that is the case, the apostrophe should be used. But if it is clear, "The student earned two As and four Bs." then no apostrophe is needed. If I am missing something and there SHOULD be an apostrophe in "The 5 Cs", I would love to know! Shockingly, I have not heard back from the Secretary of State. ;) 

Anyway, I digress...

Have a fabulous week and check back to see photos of some of the exciting activities we will be doing!