My Many Colored Days

As part of our Poetry Unit in Writer's Workshop, we've been learning lots about showing, and not telling with our words. We read the story My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss, which describes feelings as colors and actions or images that go with those colors and feelings. We've been working on writing our own versions of the story by comparing each of the colors in the story to things in our life:

For bright colors like red, orange, yellow, and pink, we described things that showed happiness or excitement 

For cool colors like blue and green, we described things that made us feel calm and relaxed

For the colors purple and brown, we described times when we felt lazy or sad 

For dark colors like black, we described times when we feel scared or angry

All of our books are now on display in our hallway, and we will be sure to share them at our Sidewalk Shelebration on May 24th! 

Planting Party!

This week has been a planting party in 2R! Many of us had success growing our lima beans, and now we are going to try our hand with some new plants!

 At the beginning of the week, we studied the packets of seeds we were going to plant in order to learn about what we were planting and how to best help them grow. Once we took notes for each packet and discussed what we should do, we got to planting:

We will now be trying to grow spinach, rainbow blend chard, and pole beans!

Later in the week, we created mini greenhouses to grow some of our pole beans in. We each designed a greenhouse to hang in the window. We placed 2 bean seeds in a plastic bag with a damp paper towel and sealed the bag, which was then stapled to our greenhouse. Not only will the sealed bag water the seed for us, but we will also be able to see the roots grow through the plastic! Hopefully some of our seeds will germinate over the weekend :) 

We also placed some cosmos seeds in a slightly larger greenhouse to see how the plants were able to water themselves in the enclosed environment. We noticed water was collecting on the top of the plastic as it evaporated from the soil, and then it would condense and fall from the lid like rain!

In just a few short days, we were already beginning to see some growth :) We can't wait to see what all of our plants look like when we return to school on Monday!

The Giraffes and The Oobleck

On Wednesday, we read the book Bartholomew and The Oobleck by Dr. Seuss, where Bartholomew and the magicians help the disgruntled king make something new fall from the sky. And while we did not make oobleck fall from the sky, we did get to play the roll of magicians as we created our own magical oobleck!

First, we combined one 4 oz. bottle of clear Elmer's glue with 1/2 cup of water (you can also use white glue, but the oobleck will not be see-through)

Next, we mixed in drops of food coloring and some glitter 

After everything was mixed together, we started to make some magic happen by combining 1/2 cup of liquid starch. 

Then, we mixed...

...and pulled...

...and yanked...

...until our oobleck was complete! 

Everyone got to play with their oobleck for a bit before we divided it up and took it home. While the oobleck was fun to make and fun to play with, we must remember:

BEWARE OF THE OOBLECK!