Learning about birds with the Audubon Society

This month we were lucky enough to have two visits from the Audubon Society to teach us about birds! We learned all about owls, including practicing different owl calls and learning to listen for prey like an owl. The instructor brought a real (stuffed) owl for us to see, as well as owl feathers and owl pellets that we got to touch and explore. The next week she brought binoculars and we went on a bird walk around the neighborhood! The kids were so engaged and we saw quite a few birds, as well as different types of flowers and trees. Here are some pictures!

We also made owl masks on Forest Friday - pictures below!

All About Books

Last week we started a new writing unit that the kids are really enjoying so far! We are working on writing All About Books (or Non-Fiction Books) that teach the reader about the topic. They have come up with so many fun things to write about so far. First, we started off by talking about what All About Books are, and then spent some time coming up with things that we are experts on!

Once we knew what we wanted to write about, we learned about how to use a graphic organizer (or a bubble map) to get our ideas down. We needed to come up with three things we knew about our topic, and the bubble maps helped us plan out what we wanted to write.

Now we have started to write our All About Books, have added illustrations, and even learned about creating diagrams to go in our books! It has been so much fun to see what each student comes up with. We have a range of topics - from Harry Potter, to Sonic the Hedgehog, to our families, our pets, and many more! In the next few weeks we will be finishing up our writing, adding captions, editing, and publishing our work!

Weather and Climate Unit

Last week we finished up our weather and climate unit for science! The kids had so much fun during this unit, and they got to do so many fun investigations. We started the unit off learning about weather, and what makes weather. Each day we went outside and observed the weather, and kept track of the data all month long!

Then we spent some time talking about severe weather. We learned about all of the different kinds of severe weather, and then focused on things that can happen in Madison. We did research on tornadoes, and learned how to stay safe during these events. Students got to model how tornadoes are created! 

Then we moved on to investigating what warms the Earth. We went outside and felt different objects and surfaces to see which felt warm and which felt cool. This led us to find out that the things that are in the shade are cooler, and the things in the sun feel warmer. 

After discovering that the sun is what warms things up, we moved on to our big unit question: how can we prevent a chocolate bar from melting in the sun? First, we needed to figure out what makes things melt. We did an investigation where the kids had to get an ice cube to melt in less than 10 minutes after coming up with a plan. We discovered that heat is what makes melt! They loved getting to melt the ice cubes and see what worked. 

To wrap up the unit, we needed to figure out how we could protect a chocolate bar from melting when placed in the sun (since the sun warms things up, it will make the chocolate melt). We created models and plans, and then got to build structures to protect the chocolate bar. Then we got to test it out, and of course eat the chocolate when we were done! They had so much fun during this science unit, and got to do so many hands on activities!