Our Day in Pictures

Happy Valentine's Day!! I hope you all survived the day of candy (I had to throw away full apples and hearts of chocolate, otherwise I might have eaten them!)!! We had school off yesterday, so I'm trying to cram a lot into yet another 4 day week :) During our African American history unit, we've been studying scientists and inventors. Today we made our own inventions. I have to say, for whatever reason, this went so much better than last year! The kids had so much fun coming up with an idea for an invention and filling out their patent applications. I kept hearing kids say, "This is the best day ever," and we hadn't even gotten to the Valentine's day activities! 

Here are the materials

 Here are some kids hard at work

 This is an example of the patent application (in my African American history unit on TPT)

 More supplies

 Here is on student's invention: the automatic pencil dispenser! 

 Here's another invention: the tv that talks to you!

Next we were on to math. Today we did an investigation with conversation hearts. Before the lesson I put about a bag and a half of hearts into 6 zip-lock bags. The task was to count the hearts. What I was really getting at was - HOW they were going to count the hearts. Were they going to count by 1s, 10s, 100s? Would they make groups? Work together? Assign jobs? I gave them absolutely no suggestions. All 6 of my groups did it differently! It was exactly what I hoped for - and led to a great conversation about place value and "friendly" numbers.

 Here is a group putting hearts into piles of 10

 This group counted by 10s first, but then by 50s since there were 5 kids in their group (a student told me this).

This is what the boy at the bottom of the photo was writing in his journal after they all had formed a pile of 10.

 This group put their hearts into bags of 50 (the only group that used baggies) and then counted by 50s.

 This was the cutest thing ever! Last week, one of my students started writing "secret valentine" notes to our class. My class was going crazy trying to figure out who it could be! They kept thinking it was me haha. How cute are these notes?!

 Last week we really honed in on George Washington Carver and did some writing (in my TPT unit too). I know the bulletin board doesn't have a title yet (any ideas?) and only half of my class's Georges fit on the board - the others are on our door. 

I hate to change the mood to sad, but I just feel like I have to acknowledge it... I am still in shock about Whitney Houston...I couldn't believe it when I heard the news, and I still can't believe it...sooo sad. God's plan can be really surprising to say the least (but at least we know it's a good one!).