We enjoyed being a part of the 24 Hour Skype with students from Epsom Primary. We spoke to them last Friday at noon, which was Saturday at 4 am for them!
Skype with Epsom, Australia from Tina Schmidt on Vimeo.
iSpy Community Project
The students and I just complete a wonderful global project called iSpy Community. Each class in this project created a Voicethread showing photos of important places in their community. Students narrated the photos with information and other children will leave comments for us telling how our community is the same or different then theirs. Voicethreads were uploaded to this Galley and now the children are trying to guess which Voicethread belongs to which school. Schools involved were from Ghana, Brazil, China, Canada, Mozambique, Venezuela, Poland, Malaysia, and South Korea. Below is our Voicethread submission. To view all the pojects, click HERE.
Does our Community look similar to yours? How is it different?
Hurricane Sandy Hits our Area
Our area took a direct hit from Hurricane Sandy over the last few days. There was a lot of rain and gusting wind that sounded like a freight train. My family and I saw flashes of blue light in the sky which turned out to be power transformers blowing! It was very scary. We are off from school all week mostly due to power outages. There are several large trees down and debris all over. Here is a photo of a downed tree and wires across the street from our school. Click HERE to read our Kidblog posts that the students wrote about their experience.
Photos From Hurricane Sandy on PhotoPeach
Watch this video of a nearby neighborhood where several large trees fell on the same street – Trees Down in Levittown Video
QR Code fun in Math
Recently, my students and I had a lot of fun with QR codes in our math class. It all started when I found some great FREE activities from the FlapJack Educational Resources website involving word problems minibooks. Each student created a word problem and turned it into a QR code. We glued the QR code into the minibook and I pasted them up around the room. Using iPods or iPads brought in from home, the children scanned them and worked on the problems in groups of 3. The answers were posted in the back of the room for them to check themselves. Everyone worked hard and had fun. I also purchased some other QR activities from Teachers pay Teachers and did another activity where the students did the problems on a worksheet and then scanned a QR code to check their answers.
Do you have any QR code resources that you can share?
QR Code Math on PhotoPeach
Skype with Salem, MA
Yesterday, we had fun when we met students from The Phoenix School in Salem, Massachusetts for a Mystery Skype. As we were giving clues from our state, we found that we had many things in common like our weather and the kinds of animals we see. We told them that Independence Hall was in our state and they told us that Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock were born in their state. What a coincidence! Their nickname is the Bay State and years ago, they use to have witch trials in their state. We thought it was very interesting that the Phoenix School goes from PreK to 8th like we do but they only have 26 kids in the whole school! That’s how many we have in just our third grade class. And we thought we were a small school! They also have 2 dogs in their school. Students from first, second and third grade joined in on the Skype and it was a fun time for everyone. We hope to keep in touch with the Phoenix Kids by commenting on each other’s Kidblogs throughout the year.
First Mystery Skype of the Year
Last Friday we had our first Mystery Skype of the year when we met Mrs. Zwart’s 4th grade class from California. We each asked and answered 10 questions to give clues and then we took a guess. Both classes did a great job and guessed on the first try. All of the students in both classes were very excited to meet and learn more about the other state. Here are a few things that we learned.
- California’s nickname is the Golden State
- Their population is 37 million
- Famous places in their state are Hollywood, Disneyland and Lego Land
- Famous people from their state are Jack Black and Steven Spielberg
- Animals from their state include mountain lions and condors
- Their school has 600 students from K-5th grade
- They don’t have any extreme storms but they do experience Earthquakes. Mrs. Zwart told us that they just practiced their Earthquake drills during the Great Shake Out. She was also told us that the noise from an Earthquake is very loud and sounds like a wave crashing.
They even played the recorder for us. Click below to take a listen to how good they sounded!
Thanks for a great first Mystery Skype!!
Quad Blogging
We are very excited to have visitors from our 2 fellow Quad Blogging classes this week: Mr. Weir’s class from Tasmania and Miss Oxlade’s class from England! Welcome and thanks for visiting our blog. We would love to learn more about you and your school. Feel free to ask us questions in your comments and we will reply here with the answers. Please let us know whether you are from Mr. Weir’s Class or Miss Oxlade’s class when you comment. You can find links to our student owned Kidblogs on the right. Can’t wait to hear from you! Below is a question to start off our conversations. Please leave us a comment with your answer. You do not have to fill in an email address in order to leave us a comment.
What is your favorite thing to do in your free time on the weekend?
Making Oobleck in Science
For the past few weeks, my students and I have been studying the 3 States of Matter: solids, liquids, and gases. Last week, we made a fun liquid called Oobleck and tried to list as many of its properties as we could. Oobleck is a very interesting liquid because it actually changes from a liquid to a solid. Check out these photos.
Oobleck Science Experiment on PhotoPeach
Do you think you would like to touch Oobleck? Here is a video where the Mythbusters make a similar liquid for one of their projects.
World Peace Day – September 21st
This year our students took part in World Peace Day. Each child made a Peace Pin Wheel. We decorated it with designs and words that represent peace. The children put their pin wheels outside around our Peace Pole and we held a school prayer service around them. If peace begins in me, then that can lead to peace in our classroom, home, neighborhood, city, country, and maybe even worldwide someday.
Did your school celebrate World Peace Day this year?
How can we promote peace in our lives?
O.R.E.O. Project
On Thursday we took part in the O.R.E.O. project which is part of the Projects by Jen website. Each child had two chances to stack Oreo cookies as high as they could before they fell. The children were not allowed to adjust the cookies once they put them on the pile. We each took a turn and then talked about our strategies and what we might do to get a higher score the second time around. Our highest stack was 34 cookies! We then added up the highest scores and calculated a class average (22 cookies). Our average was sent to Jen and we will compare our scores with other classrooms around the world over the next month. You can see the results HERE. Later in the day, we Skyped with Mrs. Hamman’s 3rd graders in Arizona to discuss our results. We also shared facts about our schools and states. What a fun project!