Making Ice Cream

We have been doing an experiment each Friday during our Solids and Liquids unit and today we made vanilla ice cream! We read a "how-to" explaining the steps we would need to follow, predicted how our liquid mixture would change to a solid during the freezing process, then worked together to follow the procedural steps to create our liquid mixture and turn it into ice cream! During our process we were able to connect to our current math learning about fractions as we had to use different sized measuring spoons and measuring cups to create our liquid mixture. On Monday we will review our process and write procedures to record today's process.

Our basic procedure for making ice cream was for partners to combine ingredients in a quart sized ziploc bag, zip and tape it shut, then put it inside of a gallon sized ziploc bag filled with ice and rock salt. Student partners then put on gloves and took turns shaking their bag for 10 minutes until the liquid mixture had turned into ice cream! Students then removed the ice cream bag from the large bag, rinsed it off, and scooped the ice cream out into cups. This was lots of fun though it required a lot of "teacher time" so the photos below only reflect two of the steps in our process! The procedure we followed went home with students today if you would like to attempt this at home!

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Taiko Performance

Last night we had our whole school Taiko drum performance at CHS as the finale to our weeklong study with Paton Sensei, our Artist in Residence!

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We Are in the Newspaper!

Check out today's Colchester Sun and you will find a photo and short article about our class toward the back! The photo and article highlight our class' solids and liquids experiment making "Oobleck!" This is the second time we have been in the paper. The first time was in the 2/28 issue (during break) where a photo and short article featured our unit on Mexico.

Kid Blogs

Today all of the students in our class created their own blogs! Mrs. Boucher, our district technology integration teacher, came to class and taught the kids about blogging! Kids learned about blog safety, such as remembering not to post our last names, phone numbers, addresses, etc, and then each student set up a blog of their very own. Kidblogs will be a great tool to help students learn about blogging and posting comments to the internet. It will also help them learn keyboard familiarity which students need to have given that the new third grade assessment aligned with Common Core Standards will expect students to type answers to questions.

I have added a new tab at the top of my blog titled "Kid Blogs." When your child clicks it it will take them directly to our class page on the Kidblogs website. Students can scroll down and click on names of students in our class to read their friends' blog posts. To sign in and create a post, students should click "log in" in the top righthand corner of the screen. They may then click on their name, enter their password (it is simple and I have taught it to them all but am not going to post it here -- I would be happy to email it to you or send it home on a sticky note if you need me to), and click "log in." Once logged in, students may write new posts to appear on their blog! Students can work on posting both at school and at home and you may post comments on their posts! We are having so much fun with this already! Let me know if you have any questions.

*There is a kidblog app if you are looking to put this on an ipad at home.
*If you want to go straight to our page on the Kidblog website go to
http://kidblog.org/mrskellysclass-19

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Taiko Animoto Video

Our UMS Music teacher, Ms. Mutz, created an animoto video about our Taiko Drummer Artist in Residence program. I am attaching links to both her blog and to the video below.


http://blogs.csdvt.org/mutzm

http://animoto.com/play/Qx7DjXYYmMSqfZfK1cJL6g?utm_source=csdvt.org&utm_medium=player&utm_campaign=player

Taiko Drumming Artist in Residence

UMS is currently enjoying the experience of hosting an Artist in Residence for one week! Stuart Paton of Burlington Taiko is teaching students about the art of Japanese drumming and the kids are loving the experience. Each class meets with Paton Sensai (sensai means "teacher" in Japanese) once a day to learn some of the Japanese Taiko style of drumming. The program began with an assembly this past Wednesday March 13 (where Paton Sensai performed and introduced Taiko to the school) and will continue through next Tuesday March 19, culminating with an evening performance at Colchester High School where students will perform! The performance begins at 6:30; please arrive at 6:15 so everyone can get into place. Below are collection of photos I've taken so far!

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Leprechaun Pudding

Today we connected Saint Patrick's Day, our Solids/Liquids theme unit, and our procedural writing unit together into one very fun experiment! We made Leprechaun Pudding! Students started with a small bag of Jello brand pistachio pudding mix (which looks white when dry), added a little milk, and watched it turn green with little gold nuggets from a leprechaun (the pistachios)! The children observed, discussed, and recorded the way mixing a solid with a liquid created a liquid with different properties from either of the two original ingredients. They also learned the new science word, "viscous," as they squeezed their bag of pudding and watched it become thick and sticky! Ask your child about it and they should be able to explain the changes they observed during the experiment as well as what "viscous" means! After recording their science observations the students ate their pudding then wrote a "how-to" (procedure) explaining the ingredients and steps used to create it. What a great morning! I truly enjoy the slideshow of our work below!

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Experimenting with Solids and Liquids

First graders are learning about solids and liquids and why they "matter" (or rather what the properties of these states of matter are)! Our class has been doing lots of science reading and discussion and today we started to experiment. We created Oobleck (which we named for Dr. Seuss' book Bartholomew and the Oobleck, which we read today) which is a liquid mixture of corn starch and water (and a little green food coloring to make it more like the book) that seems to have both properties of a solid and a liquid! We experimented with our Oobleck throughout the day, describing its characteristics and how it changes. In addition to connecting the Oobleck to our science unit, we took the opportunity to write "How to Make Oobleck" during our writing block, where our current focus is on procedural writing. Below are some photos of our Oobleck exploration and our "recipe" if you want to try this out at home.

Oobleck:

Mixing Bowl (works best when mixed with your hands, not a utensil)
Wide pan for exploration
7 cups of corn starch
4 cups of water
3 drops of food coloring

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Making Polygons

First graders just finished up a short unit introducing them to two and three dimensional geometric shapes. As one of our activities students used straws and twisty ties to build different polygons. Here are some photos of our class at work!

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Valentine's Day

Here are some photos of our Valentine's Day party! Thank you so much to all of the family members who joined us and helped out!

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Wayne from Maine

For the three weeks before February break UMS students took part in a Healthy Eating Challenge where each class used a tally chart to record the number of healthy snacks eaten in class each day in the categories of grain, fruit/vegetable, dairy, and protein. Just before break we had a whole school assembly lead by Wayne from Maine, who is a children's musician who has written his own music about healthy foods and healthy eating. He had the kids up and dancing as he sang and played the guitar! It was a very fun way to wrap up our month of focus on healthy eating!

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