Thank you

...to all the Summers-Knoll families who contributed to the generous gift certificate from Zingerman's.   


Also thank you for all the kind notes and sweet treats.  What a way to end 2011; thanks for your show of appreciation.

Bones

This fall, the children  started learning the names of the bones in our body with Dr. George.  


This week, they learned some of the reasons we have bones: to hold us up, to help us move, and to make blood.  


The spine is very important because it protects the spinal cord. 
In order to learn more about the spine, we went to visit Dr. Rose at Rose Chiropractic.  Dr. Rose showed us a model of the spine.  We could see how the nerves come from all over the body to the spinal cord.  He told us how  ligaments  hold the bones in place and showed us the cushion between each vertebra called a disc.  Dr. Rose also talked to us about keeping the spine healthy.  It is important to make sure you are not spending a lot of time with your back in the "C" shape.  Many people sit in this shape when they are working at a computer or reading in bed.  As we were leaving Dr. Rose taught us how to walk really straight by pretending we have a string pulling our head up to the ceiling.
The children had excellent manners at the office and told Dr. Rose about all the things they had learned about the body.  He was very impressed.  When we left, he told me, I had a great class, which I could not dispute.


A big thank you to Dr. Rose for letting us come to visit.

The Body

The last couple weeks, we have been learning about the body.  We started with each child writing down one or two parts of the body to learn more about.
Here is the consensus:
skin
brain
eyes
bones
cells


I went to the library and collected many books about the human body.

The epidermis was a logical place to start. The children already knew that skin: "holds in all your parts" and that "it keeps your blood in so you don't bleed till you die".   From a Bill Nye DVD we gained more information about skin from a scientific point of view.  We also listened to an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin", for a fictional perspective on the subject.  

After exploring the skin, I added digestion to the list of systems we would learn about.  I have found that the children love this topic because it ends in the popular subject of "poop".  
Digestion starts with the teeth so we made tooth puppets.  Then the food travels down your throat to the esophagus.  At this point the children learned that there is another tube called the trachea that brings air to your lungs.  So that food doesn't go down the wrong passage way, there is a special flap called the epiglottis that keeps food from going in your lungs.  The children loved all these scientific terms.  


Next, on to the stomach, where the food is mixed with digestive juices.  The children made mock esophagus's and stomachs to take home and do a quick experiment with water and a cracker to simulate what happens in to food in the stomach.  The next day we talked about what happened and then talked about the final stages of digestion that happen in the small and large intestines.

Guest student

Varvara has a friend, Elsa, visiting from Finland.  


Elsa came to spend the day with us and will be back on tomorrow and Friday.


It has been lovely to make a new friend.

Is that a frog in your throat?

Last night my voice started to get scratchy.  This morning, it was almost inaudible.  


How do you teach with a frog in your throat?  
Get the children to assist.  

The children rose to the occasion.  
At morning gathering Gabe read, More Parts.
  There are 3 books in this series by Ted Arnold.  Parts, More Parts, and Even More Parts.  It is about a child who misunderstands language and thinks he is going to lose part of his body.  For instance: when his father asks him to: "give him a hand", the boy thinks his must literally give his hand to his father.  These books have more than 100 body part idioms.  Very humorous.


No problems with quiet reading and writing.  I could go around and whisper to children about their work.


After lunch, it was story time.  Kit and Andrés, each read a few pages of our current chapter book:
Ramona and her Mother by Beverly Cleary.


Thank you to all the children for their cooperation and help in making it a pleasant and productive day.

December's Theme

This month we will be exploring the Human Body.  
On Friday, the the 5th and 6th graders came to the Lower School and gave presentations about various body parts and systems in the human body. 

This was an amazing introduction to the unit.  I wish everyone could have been there to see the incredible presentations.


On Monday, we will talk as a class about what things we found most interesting and what we would like to learn more about during December.

See  more photos and description of the 5th-6th graders project here.

Math: Problem Solving

I told the children a story about someone walking in the woods.  The person took a photo of the woods. In the picture, there was a person walking a dog, 2 squirrels chasing each other on a tree, and 3 birds flying.  The children's assignment was to work with a partner and figure out how many tails and legs were in the photo.  Teamwork, determination, and math skills were necessary to complete the task.  Here are the results:

Arwyn and Juna's work

Varvara and Eli's work

Ella and Viola's work

    Dominic and Andrew's work