Chinese New Year

Last week we discussed the Chinese New Year.  We learned that they have parades at night.  They make dragon masks and carry lanterns. We made our own dragon posters.

We also tasted some traditional food. Here we are right before we taste our Edamame!

Groundhog Day

Tuesday was Groundhog Day!  We learned about the tradition of Groundhog Day and what it means if the groundhog sees his shadow.  We used toilet paper rolls to make our own little groundhogs!

Plant Parts

Last week we talked about seeds.  Now we're learning about what comes from those seeds!

Plants have roots, a stem, leaves, and either flowers or fruits.

Stems take water from the roots, up to the leaves.  To observe this, we put some celery and white carnations in water with blue food coloring.  We left it out and when we came back, the leaves were blue!

We learned about leaves and their veins.  The leaves make food for the flower.

We also made our own flowers.

Money

We're learning how to count change! Money is difficult, but we're working really hard.

 
 
 
 

We have some songs/videos we like to watch to give us some coin counting tips.

We can watch the videos and practice at home too!

Seeds

This month we're starting a study all about plants.  We started out with seeds.

We put 3 different kinds of seeds in a baggie to see which ones would sprout first.

We also planted some bird seed to make "Hairy Harry" and "Hairy Harriet".  Look how cute they are!

When we took them home a week later, they had hair!!

 
 
We also learned about what protects the seeds.  They have coats just like us!  We soaked some lima beans in water overnight.  The coats were easy to peel off and observe.

 

Our last seed experiment was with different kinds of fruits.  We took 12 different fruits down to the science lab.  We rotated between the fruits and did some observations.  Our objective was to find out which fruits had seeds and which ones didn't.

Science Fair Project

Our class Science Project was called "Sink or Float."  We found items around the classroom and brought some from home.  We dropped them in the water and found out if they sank or floated!

Force and Motion

We spent a few weeks in January learning all about force and motion.  We stood on chairs and watched the way things fall, we swung a pendulum from different heights and observed how that affected it's motion, and we rolled a ball from different heights to see if that changed how far the ball rolled.

Another of our experiments was to see if a ball rolled different distances on different surfaces.  We set up our ramps and rolled a ball 3 times on the tile.  We used Q-tips to measure the distance.

We recorded our results on our charts.

Then we tried it on the carpet.

And lastly, on some rubber cabinet liner.

We learned that the surface does affect how far the ball rolls! It rolled the farthest on tile, then carpet, and the shortest distance on the carpet liner.

Next, we experimented with wheels and rollers.  We used pencils as rollers under our books and found out that they can make the book easier to slide.

Then we made our own wheels and axles.  We rolled our wheels all over the room!

Before we took our test, we played a game to help us review.  We played Jeopardy!

Team 2 was the winner!