Nalley's Class Blog 2011-2012

This week we went on a field trip to the Cobb County Youth Museum. When we got there, we saw a puppet show about Benjamin Franklin. It was very good. After that, a lady took us to a room and she told us about the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War. Everyone got a part and we got to act out in the skits. It was a great field trip! We had so much fun!

This week in PE we played continuous kickball and big ball. First we played continuous kickball. It was so fun. Continuous kickball is just like kickball except for the pitcher keeps pitching the ball until the balls run out. Another thing that is different is that you can’t get anyone out. If the balls run out then the kicking team gets a point. When the last person kicks they run as fast as they can. They do that because if the pitching team doesn’t get all of the balls back in before the last person gets to the “home plate” the kicking team gets 5 points. In Music we started looking at the Carmen play. We also started practicing singing in the opera. We sang about 4 or 5 songs to get started for the opera. Also in music we talked about what we should where at the opera. The boys are supposed to dress up as smugglers. The girls have to dress up like gypsy girls. (If they aren’t already) In art we finished all of the art pieces we needed to do by the end of the year.

This week we studied the 13 colonies. In read aloud we read a short book about Ben Franklin. Also we started reading a book called Winter of The Red Snow. It’s about a young girl named Abigail Stewart. George Washington and his army are freezing outside in the snow and most of his army men don’t have shoes, long pants, mittens, socks, and scarves. In our book about Benjamin Franklin we learned that he did an experiment with a silk kite with a key tied to the end to find out if lightning carried electricity.

Today the kindergartener’s chicks visited. Their names were Speedy, Cinnamon, Chocolate- Chip, Oreo, and Silent- Night. One pooped on Nicholas’s hand! It also pooped twice on the rug. Cinnamon wiggled, pecked, and tried to fly because he was scared. Speedy almost flew out of the basket he came in. They had sharp talons. Their ducklings haven’t hatched yet. We enjoyed the chick’s visit!

This week we had lots of fun in P.E, Music, and Art. In P.E we played Promise land, and we did lots running, things with dumb bells, and push -ups (and other stuff). We also threw around rag balls. We had lots of fun in P.E! In Music we practiced our Colonial Dances, like Weevily Wheat and the Virginia Reel. It is fun to do colonial things! In Art we did the Choice Studios. Some of them are idea studio, drawing studio, clay studio, collage studio, and some others. We love going to Art! This week was so great!

This week we had so much fun in World languages, Tech lab, and Science. In World languages we went on Rosetta Stone and did writing practice in our language. We had the option of writing words. In Tech Lab we researched the Mayflower’s journey to the new world some of us made it read to us. Some of us just read it and took a long time. We all had a blast in Tech Lab and WL.
This week in math we measured pounds and how much animals weigh. We sometimes had a partner but sometimes we did it by ourselves. We also started learning division. It’s not as hard as it sounds, it’s just multiplication backwards. We also did number stories. It is something where you make a story using numbers.
This week in reading we read more of our book: If You Lived in Colonial Times. It is about the Colonial times. We are learning about the houses, games, jobs, towns, and chores in the colonial times. Did you know that instead of a newspaper there was a town crier that would yell the news out to the villagers of that town? Also did you know that colonial houses could be so cold that if you were writing a letter to someone the ink could freeze right on your quill?

In Social Studies we learned about Colonies of North America. We mostly learned about how they dressed, what the laws were, and the rules at church. There were many laws. Some of their laws seemed silly to us like one of them was in some towns you had to shoot a certain amount of birds on a certain day. The laws at church were very strict. If the people at church caught you talking or even smiling you would get in trouble and if you were young and you fell asleep you would get bonked. If you were older and you fell asleep you would get tickled by a feather.

This week on Thursday, we had Colonial Craft Day. We did Game Making, Marble Bags, Calligraphy, Corn Husk Dolls and Candle Making. While we did Game Making, we made Buzz-Saws. We also did Cats Cradle and tea-saucers using yarn. When we did marble bags we had a piece of felt folded it in half and sewed it together. When we did our Corn Husk Dolls we used wet corn husks and twist them together. When we did our candles we had to shape them to fit in our candle holders. The candles were hard because the candle kept falling off the wick. At calligraphy we made titles of our colonial diaries with quills and ink.

This week in art we did choice studios and continued other pieces of art like paintings, clay pieces, and drawing.In music we watched really cool videos of how it was like to play in the 1600’s. We watched things like pig’s heads getting cut off and children playing at Williamsburg dressed-up in 1600’s clothes speaking of games and objects. In Tech Lab we did Typing Pal. On Typing Pal we played typing games like Cosmic Ball and Lava Monkey. Then we went on to apples. Apples are where you practice typing letters. This week we had such a fun week in Tech Lab, Art, and Music.

This week in P.E we played lacrosse. We passed to our partner and we did face offs. A face off in lacrosse is where you and someone else put your lacrosse sticks together and then pull your lacrosse stick up. Then you try to get the ball. We had a lot of fun in P.E. In World Languages we did Rosetta Stone. We also worked in our Vocab Study Guides. We had a good time in World Languages. In Science we did more stuff on simple machines. We worked with a partner and we rolled up a weight (a small one) from a string that was attached to a dowel. It is fun to go to Science Lab! We had a ton of fun this week in P.E., World languages, and science lab!

We studied the Mayflower. We are learning about the Mayflower. So far we’ve studied about reasons people got on the Mayflower to go to the new world. For an example: Lots of people went because of religion. Also people wanted more land and fresh water. But life on the Mayflower was harder than some people thought .Like for instance it was very crowded, it smelled very bad, and they had bad sanitation. Also Saints didn’t talk to strangers and strangers didn’t talk to saints. Saints or as you can call Separatists are people that want to believe god in their own way. So they went on the Mayflower to get away from the kings rules about how they have to worship God. Strangers are people that Saints named. They call them strangers because they were not leaving England because of religion. They wanted to get rich.

This week we started our colony diary entry # 2. And continued The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple . In the diary we read about how Will Button died from a really bad fever and how he was only sixteen. All they had to eat was hard tack and salted meat. They saw the New World but it was not where they planned to go. The big storm took them off track. To a place where there was land that they did not own.
Also we started our colony diary entry # 2. And we made up are ships name and captains name, and what it was like on a ship in the 1600 and 1700s. The next entry will be our first time in the New World.
This week in TTT we listened to the teachers, fifth graders, and sixth graders sing. First, we listened to the teachers sing a beautiful song. Then we listened to the sixth and fifth graders sing a song. After that we listened to both sing a song together.

In math we did math explorations. The centers were making shapes with straws, doing things with pattern blocks, and doing a problem about sheep and cows. In math we did problems like four nines instead of 4 times 9. We also did problems like 5 times 80. To figure that out we do 5 times 8 = 40. Then we tack on a zero and that makes the answer be 400. This week was awesome!

Today’s Blog was written by Mrs. Nalley’s entire class!

This week we had lots of fun. In Art we glazed our candleholders. The glazes were Copper, Waterfall, Burnished Steal, and Malachite. It took us almost the whole class. Art was fun! In Tech Lab we did Typing Pal. We completed some envelopes and played some typing games. In Music we practiced songs for colonial day like weevily wheat. Weevily wheat is a song and a game at the same time. This week was awesome!

This week in World Languages we set goals for ourselves, filled out a sheet, and did Rosetta Stone.

In P.E. we played lacrosse games like catch. We also learned a lot about lacrosse. Then we did sit-ups and played a game called big base. Big base is practically kickball but you can stay on base as long as you want to, but once you leave you can’t go back to the base.

In science we used push-pull meters and motion lotion (Aveeno lotion). We used the lotion to make a weight go as far as it could. Then we used little skewers to pull the brick across the table.

This week we studied Roanoke and Jamestown. A cool fact is that there were almost a dozen children in the Roanoke colony. Also did you know that John White was an artist chosen to lead the Roanoke colony? John White had a pregnant daughter whose name was Eleanor. John Whites granddaughter was the first English baby born in North America whose name was Virginia Dare.

We also studied Jamestown. The English colonists thought the land was theirs but it actually belonged to the Native Americans. In the 1600’s Jamestown was attacked by Native Americans and burned several times. Jamestown colonists built their forts in a triangle with a fence that had points on the top so the Indians would not attack them. People discovered it was much harder to live in the wilderness than in a city. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America. We hope you learned something.

Today we wrote our first journal entry for colonial day. We enjoyed writing about historical fiction on “children”, men, and woman moving to North America in the 1600’s and 1700’s in Colonial America. We had to write about children who had to leave their comfy homes and travel to the “new world”. We had a fun time writing about the “children”. This week we started reading The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple. It is about a girl that leaves her home to board the Mayflower and sail to the new land. She gets sick very often. Her best friend is named Hummy and they both hate John Billington. This week we had such a fun time studying the colonial times.

This week in the classroom for math we kept working on multiplication and started using division equations with parentheses. In math, we also did more counting backwards and forwards. Counting forwards helps us do multiplication. Counting backwards helps us do division. We also did Math Journal pages and Math boxes.

On Wednesday night we went to Symphony Hall to see some of our classmates play and dance in show. Alpin Hong, Ben Bielman, and Jun Ching Lin also performed at Symphony Hall. One of our very own classmates, Gigi, was a dancer on the stage. It was a very good performance!

Nalley Blog March 16, 2012

 
Written by our entire class!

 
This week we had a wonderful awesome Dad’s Day. First we enjoyed making cool, quick, race cars that were made out of recycled tops, cans, bottles, toilet paper rolls, nails, tooth picks, duct tape, straws, hot glue, and pipe cleaners. While we were making cars we ate doughnuts and drank orange juice. Plus, even we even had some people used iPhones to record their car go down the incline plane! It was really cool, and our cars went VERY fast! We had a wonderful week! We won’t ever forget third grade’s Dad’s Day! Best of all, we got to see our Awesome Dads!

 
This week we did stuff that include music, media, and tech lab. In music we started learning a dance for colonial day called “Weevily Wheat”.Weevily Wheat is a song that kids used to sing to entertain them. Media was so rad! In Tech Lab we started working on Typing Pal. Also in media we read Forever Friends. We also talked about Spring Break. Ms. Morrison did so many fun things! She also reminded us that on Friday was the used book sale.

 
This week in the classroom during math we worked on multiplication, division, and skip counting. We also learned about division and multiplication charts. We are getting better at multiplying and dividing. We also tried out a new, awesome, multiplication, computer game, that Mrs. Nalley told us about. We read a short book called Wind in the Willows. It is about a water rat, a mole, and a toad and how they are all friends and they go on wonderful, fun and un normal adventures together.

 
Last week we learned about mountain Ranges, such as the Alps, The Himalayas, and The Andes. We all made projects using the research we collected in a chart. The columns were animals, plants, and people. Some of the animals were, ibex, Marmots, golden eagles , lynx ,chamois. Also some of the plants are, Primrose, chestnut tree, cork oak , fir tree , edelweiss. Some of the people are The Sherpa. This week people did weather presentations, Power Point Presentations, and blog presentations.

 
In PE we played basketball by playing real games against each other. We played capture the flag. We ran in Discovery Woods. In World Languages we practiced our languages. We discussed tooth traditions from around the world!This week was awesome!

 Animals

This week I learned about animals and plants in the Himalayas. My
favorite animals are the red pandas, the snow leopard and the Bengal tigers.

Red pandas eat eggs, nuts, small mammals, bamboo, berries, and flower seeds. It looks like a raccoon. It has
long, furry red fur. It has a wet nose, and is mostly active during the day.

The snow leopard has thick
gray hair and wide fur covered feet which act as snow shoes. They have powerful
legs and can jump as far as 50 feet! They like to eat the blue sheep of Tibet,
the mountain ibex, and smaller animals like marmots, hares, and game birds.

The Bengal Tigers live in India. They lived
alone and hunt at night. They travel many miles to find buffalo, deer, wild pigs
and other large mammals to eat. They use their coats as camoflauge.

The Asian elephants eat crops like bananas
and other fruits that grow in the wild. They also dine on grass, leaves, twigs
bark, and other things that they can forage.

Plants

There are 1900 plants in the Himalayas. My favorite is the
Himalayan Balsam because it is known as the Policemans Helmet. It grows 1-2
meters high. It has a strong musty smell when it is crushed. It has pink hooded
shaped flowers which are 3-4cms tall and 2cm wide. It grows mostly in India and
we can eat it’s green seed pods, leaves, and shoots. How cool is that!!!!

By Jack Valentine

This week I studied animals and plants from the Himalayas.
In my opinion my favorite animal that I studied is the Red Panda. It has large
pointy ears, a red tail, dark eyes, a round head and looks a lot like a raccoon.
It eats bamboo, berries, mushrooms, roots, acorns, lichen, grasses, small
birds, fish, eggs, rodents, and insects. It lives in trees in the countries of Tibet, Burma,
Nepal, andBhutan.

I also
researched another cool animal called the Tibetan Yak. The Tibetan Yak looks
like a Buffalo
(probably because it is related to cattle). It has long hair, with wool, and an
extra layer of fat. The Tibetan Yak can live from 9,800 ft. to 18,000 ft.
because it has a large lung and a big heart. It can’t live anywhere close to
where we live in the heat, because it has barely any sweat glands. It is very
fat and can be 5-7 feet tall. Because of that it is domesticated and can carry
around people and goods very easily. It is also very easy to be trained. It
eats grasses, herbs, mosses, and lichens, and also chews chunks of ice and snow
for water.

My favorite plant that lives in the Himalayasis AWESOME! It’s called Rhododendron. It is a
flower with heavy layers of beautiful bright petals. It lives in the Himalayas
in Bhutan, Northern India,
and Nepal.
It doesn’t have many uses, but it adds color to rather dull places.

I knew that the Himalayas
were cool, but DEFINITELY not this cool.

By Alexander Zuch

The Tibetan Yak

In media we read tooth books for tooth day. We read Sweet
Tooth, and   The Tooth Fairy’s First Tooth.

In music we played a game where you got a big yellow die and rolled it and that is how many points for each sign you got right. Then you
held all of the musical dice and roll them. Then you have to name the musical
signs.

This week in art we had a totally awesome time. We made
oil pastel abstract art and we also listened to music to inspire us. We made
the oil pastel art for Alpin Hong.

This week in P.E. we took a run and practiced basketball!
When we took a run all we did was run outside around the field and playground
once. After that we went to the gym. When we went to the gym we practiced
basketball by chest passing and bounce passing. We also shot a few baskets.
World Languages was awesome, as always. We finished in progress lessons on
Rosetta Stone if we had any time.  And as
I said “P.E. and World Languages was awesome, as always!”

This week in Tech lab, we have been researching mountain
ranges (Alps, Andes, Himalayas, Alaskan Range) for our project, Think-Tac-Toe.
Think-Tac-Toe is a unit when you research a mountain range and do 3 projects on
your chosen range. We are all looking forward to starting our projects.  So far, it’s been a BLAST!

In Science Lab,
we started a unit with simple machines. We learned about jouls and Newtons and
how you measure work, and how hard you are working. We have had a FABULOUS week
in Science!!!!

This week we started our research on mountain ranges, and
decided what mountain range projects we should study. We researched animals,
plants, and people of the mountains. We used the wiki, and the trinity website.
Also we learned about lots of animals like the Red Panda, the Puma, moose, and
the Andean condor vulture. Plants like alstromia glory, edelweiss, coca, larch
tree, oak tree, and the chestnut tree. Also we had fun researching people or
culture like the Sherpa, the Incas, and the Andeans. We are having a good time
researching things in the mountains and mountains ranges.

This week in math we worked on symmetry and geometry. We
did some fun activities with lines of symmetry. We also worked with 90, 180,
45, 360, and 30 degree angles. Also we worked on rays, line segments, lines,
and right angles. In Tale of Despereaux, Roscuro is planning revenge on
the princess Pea while Mig is tricked into helping him.

This week we went outside for P.E. because they were using
the AWAC for Spotlight on Art. We played tag, capture the flag, and did a 10
minute run. On the ten minute run most people got a better score than last
time. In tag the taggers wore a jersey.

In Music we learned a new song and
played a game where you had four balls and you tried to get them on the target.
The target was a velcro music staff and the balls were ping pong balls with
velcro on it. It was very hard and fun.

In World Languages we made books for
the kindergarten and second graders. We wrote our books in our language. In
Science we played a game where there were resources and goats. We had to make
symbols to show that we wanted water, food, or shelter we turned around and walked
fast to touch somebody and walk them back to the other side. We had to find the
same resource that we chose. If we couldn’t find the resource that we chose
then we would be dead, and if you are dead then you fall into the ground and turn
into a resource.

In Media we did a thing that you would vote for a person that
made a book, and whoever won would win a prize. Our Media teacher read a book
to us. Then we checked out books. TTT on TV A.K.A. TTTTV was talking about some
of the famous African Americans that changed any place in the world. It was
very interesting because you learned about some people that you never knew
existed. You also learned some things that you didn’t know about somebody you
already know about. Like you might’ve learned about something that you didn’t know
that Martin Luther King jr. did!
By: Alexander, Annie, and Charles

This week in Tech Lab we went on Google
Earth. After we found our houses and Trinity School we got to explore anywhere
we wanted to go on Google Earth. We also got to see each other’s houses. Some
people looked at mountains, and others looked at random houses. It was really
cool to look on the other side of the world.  We also got to look at the old Turner Field. Did
you know it got turned into a parking lot? In World Languages we sang songs in
our language, did Rosetta Stone, and played freeze-dance.

This week in media we had fun doing plays
about interrupting chickens and another book about an interrupting dog called Ivan
the Terrier. We also checked out our interesting biographies.

Next we had a great time in art creating our
colonial candle holders out of clay. We had a blast!

On Math Day our parents came and did fun math
projects with us. We did projects like symmetry bugs, multiplication bingo, tangrams
and made our names out of fraction and
decimals on a 100’s grid paper.

This week in science lab
we learned about mountains. We also did something about the fittest M&M and
how the hardest M&M type or color would be the strongest. The blue M&M
won. We learned about how there a vote about what new color M&M the whole
world wanted. The world voted on the blue M&M, but they changed the formula
a tiny bit. That’s why the blue M&M is the hardest to crush.

This week in P.E. we did the pacer and the
speed rope for our fitness file .The pacer is when you hear a beep and you try
to make it to the other side of the gym before the next beep .If you don’t make
it to the other side in time you get a strike. If you get two strikes you’re
out of the pacer. The speed rope is when you try to get as many jumps as you
can in a minute. Then you record how many jumps you jumped in a minute and then
you write it down on your fitness file. The last thing we did was play paddle
ball with a partner. It was totally rad!

In music we played musical twister. Musical
Twister is where our teacher Mrs. Gangarossa
is telling us to put our hands and feet on a space or a line on the
musical staff. Four people go at a time. All of the people that won go against
each other. After two rounds of Twister we take the champions and they play
against each other. The winner of that is the grand champion! I have to tell
you…P.E. and Music are extremely
fun!!!

This week’s blog was created, revised, and edited by the entire class!