Today’s big investigation was how the texture of an object changes how we paint with it. We used carpet scraps to paint and realized there were lots of different ways to paint with them. Timo realized that the sides of the carpet painted differently, while Bisola liked dragging the fringe across the paper. Teddy realized the carpet would dry out the paint, but Gia liked tapping the paper with the edge of the brush to make dots and lines. Yianni even used his carpet to paint a shark from our fish investigation and a dragon from the story! It’s fascinating the ways different objects changed the way we paint and how they impacted the way the colors blended!
Our volume investigation is getting even more complicated! Mr. Chris was trying to fill up the big water jug before school, but he got interrupted after he put in 10 scoops of water. He marked on the jug where 10 scoops of water was, but he wasn’t able to finish filling it up. In our independent investigations, people tried to fill it up and see how many scoops it would take to fill it up. Niki got frustrated that someone else was using the large funnel, so she realized the marble ramp could serve as a funnel; what awesome problem solving skills! As a class, we found out it would take 5 more scoops to fill the jug from the line all the way to the top. Sokrates realized that if we had 10 and added 5 more, it would be 15 scoops all together. We counted it out with our scoops and, yup, he was right! Being able to count on and find how many more we need to fill something is a key number sense and algebra skill!
Our science investigation shifted to fish, since we are going to the aquarium. Yesterday, Gia asked how big and small fish could get. We found out that the biggest fish in the world, the whale shark, can grow to 41 feet long. We used paper and tried to estimate how long 41 feet is. Anja used the 41 on the class number line, Sokrates counted out 41 steps, and Tove counted 41 turns of the paper roll. Niki and Rebecca both decided to use a ruler to measure it, but they weren’t quite sure how to use them. Once everyone had made their whale shark estimates, we laid them out in the gym to compare. We then used rulers laid end to end to see how long our estimates actually were. Our lengths were everywhere from 2 feet to 29 feet; no one guessed how long the whale shark actually is. Now that we know how to measure, tomorrow we are going to use our new skills to create and compare the lengths of different fish! I can’t wait to see how our measurement skills improve.
In our Read Aloud, the Viking Council decided to get rid of the sea dragon by yelling at it. None of us are very confident in the plan, as the dragon is very big. We also used our new word from the story, ‘morale’, to describe how the Vikings felt and even how the class felt. When we described our morale as ‘excited’, I had to take a picture of how we all reacted! While none of us think the yelling plan will work, we’re excited to find out what happens tomorrow.
