Sunday, December 16, 2012

Tis' the Season--Part 1!


Tis' the Season! 
We are welcoming the holidays!!!

This week, during Reader's Workshop, we began our gingerbread unit!
So exciting!
We started reading different versions of the gingerbread man
and compared each one to the another.

Here are a few versions we have read so far:

Our Reader's Workshop concept this week was cause and effect.
We talked about what cause and effect means by using this as an example:
A dark, gray cloud causes rain. Rain is the effect of that dark cloud.
We discussed how good readers will see cause and effect in their stories.
"A good reader has to think about how one story event leads to another."

During Language Arts, we continued to learn about nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Here is our web of different adjectives/describing words.



During Science, we read a version of the gingerbread
 man that had a tricky fox at the end.
In the story, the tricky fox talks the gingerbread man into jumping on his back to 
cross a river. We wondered why the gingerbread man 
didn't just swim across the river on his own. 
So, we did a little experiment to find out what would happen to
the cookie if he had chosen to swim the river.

Here is our experiment: We placed gingerbread cookies in water.
What will happen???


We recorded our predictions in our science journals.


One day later....we found out what would
have happened to the Gingerbread Man if he would have crossed the river.
He would have dissolved!
We discussed what it means to dissolve.
In addition, we talked about other liquids that can dissolve like:
juice, coke, milk



On Friday, we created GINGERBREAD MEN!!!
It was so much fun!
We painted them with chocolate pudding.
Then, we decorated them with yummy candies!




Grace is licking her fingers from the pudding!