Month: March 2018

Today was a day that really grew our hearts and made me appreciate the character of our students. We started by finishing our book and discussing if we would want to go with the rats to Thorn Valley or if we’d like to stay in the mice’s new home. Yianni was enthusiastic that he’d want to go. Anja agreed that she would at least want to visit the rats since they were nice, but she wasn’t sure she’d want to live with them. Tove said that it was tough to say, since the life in the valley would be really tough, but they’d be happier. Timo, on the other hand, would want to stay in Mrs. Frisby’s home, since she had worked so hard to make it safe. It was a great discussion to wrap up the novel and I was thrilled with the way they talked about the text.

We started bagging up the trail mix for the Night Ministry today and it was great. Niki worked to make sure that each bag had a good mix of stuff in it, so it wasn’t just one kind of thing. Gia added on that it was important to make sure it was a full cup of trail mix in each so they wouldn’t be hungry. Paolo knew that some people would want to eat the food, especially the candy or chocolate cereal, but reminded us that we were doing for people that didn’t have as much as we did. I was really proud to see them working on this project.

Our St. Baldrick’s Day was great. We spent part of our morning making a card for Tommy, a little boy recovering from cancer that visited us. Bisola suggested we make a card of the things we liked to make him happy. Jerome thought smiley faces and hearts might work, while Teddy drew his favorite Mario cart. Rebecca worked hard to draw her best rainbow. Sokrates knew that a lot of kids like video games, so he drew different characters from video games. Timo traced his hand giving a thumbs-up, just to let Tommy know it was going to be okay. We also listened to Ms. Mary talk about what St. Baldrick’s means to her and watched her get her head shaved. We found out that the school as a whole raised over $12,000 for cancer research, which is incredible. Paolo and his dad Roman, Timo, Yianni, Sokrates, Teddy, and myself all shaved our heads and everyone enjoyed cheering the shavees on while dancing and competing in the free throw contest. It was a beautiful day.

Don’t forget, we have the program tomorrow night. Have a great night!

Things are really heating up in the story, and we started by discussing how the rats are likely to feel. Niki thought the rats were probably feeling scared before the big day, and Sokrates explained that some of the younger ones were worried they were going to lose their parents. Bisola was especially worried that the Dr. and the cat were going to team up and be super dangerous. Jerome was optimistic that the Doctor in the chapter title was talking about Mr. Ages. The chapter was incredibly exciting, as the rats used their tunnels to escape from Dr. Schultz. Two of the rats didn’t make it out, while Brutus made it out, fell unconscious, and then came back around. In the story, Mrs. Frisby is too scared to watch, so Timo explained that maybe she was scared of being caught by Dr. Schultz if he saw her watching and Tove added that it was a super sad chapter. After our chapter, we discussed whether Dr. Schultz was a bad person. Anja was still sure he was a bad person, but Sokrates thinks he just doesn’t know that the rats don’t want to steal anymore. He thought that, if Dr. Schultz knew that, he wouldn’t want to hurt the rats anymore. Timo disagreed, since he thinks the Dr. doesn’t care about the rats at all because they aren’t people. Yianni felt that, regardless of his reasons, it is bad to want to kill the rats. This was a really tough discussion for the class to come together on, which is perfect. I really encourage you to talk through these issues at home.

Our explorations today really centered around the chapter. First, we tried to build escape tunnels like the rats used. Paolo used his tennis ball to make sure the tunnel was big enough for a rat to go through, which seemed like a pretty rational test. Rebecca was happy that the tunnel they built was big enough for her rabbit to go through with her. After she finished building hers, Niki felt it was too short; “See, Dr. Schultz could just reach in and grab me like this”, as she reached in and grabbed her monkey. Teddy struggled to keep his nap mats up to make the tunnel but decided it was comfy if it fell around him. The class really enjoyed seeing how to build structures to move through and thinking about how it would feel inside something like that.

The other piece of our exploration was making rat-versions of ourselves to decorate the room when we finish the book. We discussed how we could pick a distinctive part of ourselves, like my glasses or beard, and make a rat that was kind of like us. Gia decided to give her rat long hair like hers, while Anja liked drawing curly hair on hers. Niki added some scribbles to hers since she likes drawing so much, just like Timo added a baseball for his rat to play with. Paolo made sure his rat had the same smile as him (I think he nailed it), while Sokrates gave his rat green eyes. Jerome drew his rat angry, since he knew that he would want to stop Dr. Schultz and thought it was important his rat felt the same. This was a bit of a different exercise for the class, but it was still interesting thinking about the attributes that make us into individuals.

We are going to the Bridge tomorrow to practice for Friday’s program, so make sure you are at school on time so we can go together. As such, we are NOT going to the bank tomorrow! Have a great night everyone.

Welcome back everyone! We are excited to be back and moving forward. Speaking of, today we heard the rats’ plan. I assumed that everything was going great in the story, since Mrs. Frisby’s house was already moved. Sokrates reminded us that they still have to worry about the cat. Jerome said that he thought Dragon might be more dangerous with the new place her house is in, while Rebecca thought that maybe Dragon was going to attack the rats when they were moving. Anja reminded the class that Dr. Shultz was coming and Bisola added that he was planning on killing all the rats. Thankfully, the rats have a pretty good plan on how they’re going to escape, even though the plan requires a few of them to stay behind. Timo thought that if he were a rat, he’d want to be one of the rats going to Thorn Valley so he can help there. Paolo, on the other hand, wanted to stay behind, since he wants to stop Dr. Shultz.

Our other time during the day was taken up by a great trip to the library. When they got in, Teddy was thrilled to find the dinosaur section, which he recognized by the picture on the shelf and all of the book covers with dinosaurs on them. We once again had a group of students ask the librarian to help them find books, which meant they got to go in the older kids’ area. Bisola wasn’t sure if she was going to want the book she picked out, so she looked at the book covers around it to remember where it belongs. Thanks to Sokrates’ Thor book and all of the questions he asked, I got to explain the difference between maces, axes, halberds, and morningstars; it was an exciting discussion! Gia realized that she could use the layout of a magazine and the title of it to put it away when she was done. Tove was giggling that she liked her book because the mermaids in it liked eating marshmallows, just like her. Also, we received our adventure patch and are excited to start working on our animal stories patch.

It seemed like a super short day, but that didn’t stop us from getting a lot done. Also, tomorrow is the last day to make donations for the Night Ministry before we start bagging up the trail mix: remember, any dry cereal, fruit, or M&Ms can be donated for us to bag up. We’re going to start mixing it up and bagging it Wednesday, so bring in any last minute donations! Have a great night everyone.

We had so much fun today, the other classes turned green with envy! It was so great meeting with all of you and talking about our rock stars.

With the chapter title of ‘Escape’, everyone was pretty sure that Mrs. Frisby was going to get out of the cage. Once she got out, everything pretty much went to plan, with her warning the rats and the rats moving her house successfully. We were initially concerned that Dragon was going to chase Mrs. Frisby, but Dragon didn’t wake up at all! Tove was wondered if they were tired from chasing Mrs. Frisby, but Yianni pointed out that Dragon actually didn’t chase Mrs. Frisby at all. Paolo thought maybe Dragon ate too much, but Timo remembered that Dragon ate the sleeping powder. After the house was successfully moved, we discussed how Mrs. Frisby was feeling and Anja was sure she was happy because she was free and her house was moved. Jerome agreed, saying now she didn’t have to be worried about the tractor. Sokrates reminded the class that they still needed to be watching out for Dr. Shultz and Yianni knew that cat’s have great hearing and noses, so Dragon will be able to find them pretty easily. We’re nearing the end, so let’s hope everything gets sorted out next week!

In the book, the rats use rollers and pulleys to move the house, which the class didn’t really know a lot about. I demonstrated rollers using blocks and colored pencils, but we spent most of our building time experimenting with pulleys all over the classroom. I was expecting the class to struggle with the pulleys, but they really had a blast seeing how they worked. Anja noticed that, while it was tough to keep the rope on the wheel in the pulley, it was way easier to pull if it was on there. Paolo encouraged me to find higher places to use it, since it wasn’t great just on the side of the cart. Teddy wanted  to try lifting 2 baskets on the same pulley but ultimately decided it was better to just have one string per pulley. Tove realized that, whatever direction she pulled the rope, the basket would go straight up, a pretty key realization about pulleys. I hadn’t planned on doing a simple machines exploration, but now… Wait and see!

We wrapped up our texture in paint exploration by mixing flour into the paint, which we noticed was finer than the sand, which was finer than the pencil shavings. Jerome wondered it it would smell like play-doh, since he remembered we used flour in the play-doh. After painting with it for awhile, Gia said it was kind of like play-doh paint since it was so thick. Anja noticed how soft the flour felt while Rebecca felt like it made the paint squishy. Teddy helped people dump the extra flour back in so it wouldn’t make a mess. Bisola liked the flour best of all the mix-ins because of how it didn’t change the colors and how it covered the paint afterwards. What a fun little journey.

Have a great weekend everyone and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’m not going to mess around, this was called the worst chapter in the book by Anja and Timo. We found out that Jenner and some of his friends left, but we also saw Mrs. Frisby place the sleeping powder in the cat food bowl. However, as she was running back to the hole, the farmer’s son slammed a metal bowl down and captured her! Before we read it, Anja was hoping that the cat was the thing that got captured, which she definitely thought would have been better. Teddy expected it to be the rats that were captured, which Jerome thought made sense, as they might end up back in the cages at NIMH. This was certainly an exciting chapter and we’re all excited to see what happens next!

As usual, we went to the bank and learned a lot. Tove discussed the gold coin her sister got from the tooth fairy, which she hadn’t seen many of otherwise. Through our talk, Timo realized that his $1.50 was also 150 cents, which was pretty wild. Teddy wanted to count the cash first, since it was easier to count. Rebecca was surprised that she only had 3 coins but they were worth 60 cents. Paol was confused because he thought he had $15, but he only had 6 bills (we worked it out in the end). Yianni I think might have been laughing at me when I asked how he knew it was worth $1 (“Because it has a 1 on it?” and I thought yeah, that is a pretty good reason). When we were at the bank, Jerome asked the teller where she stored the money, which was a very interesting question. Speaking of, the class has really been getting into counting money, which we sadly don’t have any of in our classroom. If you’d like to donate some change (no more than $5) to the class for counting activities, that would be great. If you do, it would also be great if we could get a variety of coins (like a dollar coin or some old style wheat pennies) instead of just a roll of shiny new quarters. This is completely optional, but I thought I would throw it out there in case anyone had the same 5-gallon jug of change my dad always seemed to have :).

Continuing our texture studies, we added sand to our paint today. Rebecca noticed right away that the paint sounded scratchy with the paint mixed in. This was confirmed by Bisola who managed to rub a hole in her paper; she thought it because it was ‘salty’, which we figured out meant rough and scratchy. Yianni noticed that the sand on the q-tip let him draw really fine lines. Hopefully, in our final investigation on Friday, we’ll be even better able to see how texture in our paints affects our painting.

In a sad note, Stephen Hawking passed away today, so we talked a little about him. The class noticed that he was in a wheelchair and used a computer to help him talk, which was pretty interesting to the class. To help us think through this, we used our building and drawing time to make inventions that would help people. Jerome thought about what he could invent to help his grandma after her eye surgery. Sokrates wanted to make an extra Earth, just in case something bad happens to this one. Anja made something to help people carry heavy things. Paolo made a repair robot to help fix broken things, while Gia made a house to keep people safe. I’m glad the class got to talk about someone with disabilities, something we don’t talk about enough. Have a conversation about how people can do different things and how we should respect those people.

Today I checked in with Gia: “The book was the best part. It was a good story. It was silly when she bumped her head. She probably feels sad because it hurt.” She also decided to celebrate he day by losing a tooth!!! What a wacky day!

Today was a little snowy, but we didn’t let that slow us down. In our read-aloud, we found out the fight that divided the rat community: should they keep stealing or make their own community in the Thorn Valley. Yianni explained that Nicodemus wanted to live out there by himself, and Sokrates thought it might be so he could bring his family out there. Timo agreed with Nicodemus, since he thought they would be safer in Thorn Valley than living with people. Jenner, on the other hand, wanted to stay living by people. Teddy thought he might want to stay by people since that is where his family was, while Paolo thought it might be that he got used living with the things people have. We don’t know which side we agree with, and this would be a great discussion to have tonight.

In the building with cup exploration today, Paolo realized that there were 6 cups on the bottom story of the building and it was a 6 story tall triangle. Jerome took this idea and explained that, since there were 10 cups on the bottom story, he knew it was a 10 story building. Anja realized that, since the tall ones kept falling, she liked building a long wall that was more fun to break. We also finally had someone ask how many cups we’re going to use tomorrow, so I highlighted the number of cups we had each day on the 100s chart. Everyone is pretty sure that we’re going to have something in the 70s, but there’s no agreement on the exact answer.

We started a mini-texture exploration today by adding pencil shavings to our paint. Bisola pointed out that, while the paint last week didn’t stick to the crayons, the shavings really stuck to the paint. Rebecca thought the paint looked furry when the pencil shavings stuck to it. Gia gave some advice to Tove by saying she should put the paint on before the shavings. Tove disagreed because the shavings would dance around on the paper if they weren’t glued down. Yianni noticed that the paint dried way faster if the shavings were mixed in. I can’t wait to see how they handle the next mix-in!

I checked in with Tove today: “I really like listening to the story because I like movies and we’re getting close to down. All of the movies have been good so far, so I think this one will be good too!” Well, we’ll be able to find out for sure next week. Have a great night everyone!

Today was an incredible day. I’m normally pretty impressed with the class’s discussion at the library, but today they really did a great job thinking and talking together. Jerome started the trip by pointing out that we had read one of the books in our patch batch, but Paolo pointed out that actually it was a little different, since the other one had dinosaurs at home, while this one was dinosaurs at school. Tove was looking through the pop-up books and figured out that one of the books must have magnets in the cover, since they snapped together like magnets. Gia and her friends asked the librarian to help them find Hello Kitty books, which she was happy to help with. As they were looking, Bisola suggested they pick up an extra Hello Kitty Book for Niki. As they were looking, Sokrates let me know that part of the bookshelf had broken. By the time I got over there, Timo had already figured out that it was there to keep the book stacks separated and fixed it. Rebecca knew she liked Disney Princesses, so she read all of the magazine issues about them. As she was looking through a craft magazine, Anja turned to me and said “if I cut this out, I could fold it into a cube”; you could have knocked me over with a feather! Looking at another magazine, Yianni was pretty sure that the rat on the cover was actually Mr. Jonathon Frisby, which was a great connection to our read-aloud. Honestly, this was a great visit. I had to go back at lunch and talked to the librarian, who had nothing but good things to say about how thoughtful and engaged the class was. Great job!

Our other work for the day centered around the read aloud. In the chapter for the day, the rats ventured out and found a man that worked as a ‘toy tinker’ that had died of a heart attack in the forest (children’s books are super dark!, but we did get to talk about how heart attacks work). The chapter ended as the rats were about to open the tinker’s truck and we predicted what was inside the truck. Bisola hoped they had food in the truck, while Yianni thought the truck would have lots of different stuff they would need. Sokrates thought it was clear there would be toys in the truck, which people thought made sense. As we were wrapping up, Timo said that the rats shouldn’t have taken the man’s truck. Yianni thought it was okay, since they could finish fixing the toys the man was working on. Anja disagreed, saying the man’s family would be upset if they found out. Bisola added that they would yell and try to kill all the rats. Jerome pointed out that the rats are trying to find a way not to steal food, but they thought it was okay to steal a truck. This little discussion was quite a gem, as they discussed ethics through the lens of the story and used things from the text to support their arguments. If you can encourage your child to have these kind of discussions, like if people should hate rats since they spread disease, it will help them grow and think critically.

As our building challenge, we made our own trucks and discussed what they would carry. Anja made a flower truck, while Teddy laughed at his butt truck. There was a great partnership between Teddy’s truck and the truck Yianni and Jerome built, which was a toilet truck. Gia liked her unicorn truck, while Paolo thought over what kind of food his food truck would have in it. Rebecca made a giant pet truck, which Tove wanted to make sure they would be able to fit in. This was a case where the building was useful, but it was great talking about what kind of things they care about and how they would be moved around.

A big thanks to Anja and her family for the Lego and Lego tape donations! The kids are incredibly excited to use them. Have a great night everyone!

We finally found out the Rats’ plan: they want to grow their own food so they don’t have to steal it anymore. We found this out in the main hall of the rats, which was made out of a cave. Timo pointed out how hard it must be for rats to make a plow, but Sokrates explained it must be because they want really badly to grow their own food. Yianni added that it made sense, since they know that it is bad to steal. This wasn’t exactly the plan we were expecting them to have, but we are all curious now to see how they do it.

Based off the cavernous main hall in the story, we discussed what we knew about caves. Then, using whatever material they wanted, they built their own caves. Timo made sure that his cave had a back entrance, just like the rats’. Sokrates added that, as we learned in the video, there was a bear in the cave. Tove hid toys in the bottom chamber of the cave. Paolo attempted to build a cave in the sand but pointed out how much tougher it was than building in the blocks. Niki decided to build under the table, since that provided a strong ceiling and she just needed to build the walls. It was a pretty incredible day of constructions.

We wrapped up our resist art projects by painting on our glued pictures from yesterday. When she came in, Gia was concerned that I flattened out the pictures by stacking them, asking if they would stick together. Paolo wasn’t sure why there were bubbles in the glue, but guessed it had something to do with how they dried. Niki was sad her glue turned clear when it dried, since the color would have shown up better on the white glue. Anja thought that the dried glue felt squishy, while Bisola appreciated that she could wipe the paint off the dried glue. Rebecca really liked the rainbow she made, while Jerome appreciated the way the yellow really showed up against his paper. This was an interesting progression, which I really enjoyed talking the class through. Hopefully, this will encourage them to experiment with mixing media in art, something that can create interesting effects.

Today I checked in with Yianni: “I really liked it when we were painting. The glue from yesterday left little lines of glue when they dried. The paint didn’t like the glue, so if you painted after it dried, it looked funny.” I’m glad he got the idea of a resist and enjoyed the process. Have a great weekend everyone!