Say it ain't snow!

What is this mysterious "Winter Storm Warning" of which you speak?

Issued by The National Weather Service Houston/Galveston, TX 9:55 am CST, Fri., Dec. 4, 2009
... WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM CST THIS EVENING...
SNOW IS FALLING OVER MUCH OF SOUTHEAST TEXAS. AS THE UPPER LEVEL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM NEARS THE AREA PERIODS OF MODERATE SNOW WILL BE EMBEDDED IN THE WIDESPREAD LIGHT SNOW. THE SNOW WILL CONTINUE INTO THE EARLY EVENING BEFORE ENDING. TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 0.5 TO 1.5 INCHES CAN BE EXPECTED... WITH ISOLATED TOTALS OF 2 TO 4 INCHES.

Crazytown!

What We're Reading:
The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler
The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll
Runaway Mittens by Jean Rogers
The Missing Mitten Mystery by Steven Kellogg
Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester
The Snow Tree by Caroline Repchuk
I'm in Charge of Celebrations by Byrd Baylor

Rough around the edges

I'll admit that when we first discussed this Pen Pal Project and Ms. C suggested having the children make envelopes, I thought in my head (but didn't say), "That sounds like an unnecessary extra step--a whole extra afternoon of scissors and tape and cutting and folding and wasting LOTS of paper. We can just put all the letters in one big envelope." However, I was suckered into the envelope-making industry as soon as I saw the looks of anticipation on my students' faces as they opened their envelopes and pulled out those very first letters from their pen pals. There's something special about getting a letter in an envelope . . . instead of on a Post-it or in an e-mail or a text message.

When I found the homemade envelope tutorial, I was hooked--no tracing templates, no cutting, no wasted paper. All good and so very clever. Then the second round of letters from our pen pals arrived, and I knew we were in trouble. I have met my match in Ms. C! We made envelopes by reusing magazine pages. She kicked it up a notch with envelopes made from old key map pages!




Uh, oh . . . . This could really get dangerous.





What to do? Our letters were due to be placed in the inter-office mail and I didn't have enough full-page magazine photos. I love the way scarcity is so often the mother of new ideas. When I pulled out the ink brayers (for a printing project--and a craftastic afternoon with Franny), I found a big bag of naked crayons in the bottom of the box. With my mind already on fall leaves (my mother scooped some up on a trip to someplace cold and tucked them into the pages of a book), those crayons got me thinking about leaf rubbings. It was only a hop, skip, and a jump to using up some of that tractor-feed printer paper that Mrs. D keeps trying to get me to throw away and those broken, naked crayons to make beautiful, beautiful envelopes. Plus, a fabulous question appeared in the Great Questions Book: "Why do leaves change color?" Oh, boy! Letter-reading, letter-writing, art project, fine motor practice, science lesson--all in one! Integrating subjects and multi-tasking learning! In education circles, it's trendy to propose posting the learning objectives for each day on the wall, but I think I'd have to make objective wallpaper. If we're only hitting one objective, we're not using our time efficiently.

So we're branching out! (Pun intended--Blame my father and his entire clan of groan-inducing punners. Bad genes, bad. Seriously, it's a frightening thing when he and his cousins get together.) First, we reviewed the rules of safe collecting in the field: Collect in ways that are safe for you and respectful of the habitat in which you are collecting. (And don't run with scissors!) Off went the children, gathering leaves from the far reaches of the playground. Now, despite my efforts to dispute the idea that we don't have seasons (we do!--Right now, we're in the thick of "acorn season," which closely follows cicada season and is easily outdone by Oak pollen season), it is true that we are not subject to the dramatic mood swings of nature experienced in cities farther from the equator. Most of the leaves we collected were still green.



Inside, we divided the leaves into trays--one for each Cooperative Investigation Team, along with a cup of naked crayons--and got to work.






The results were phenomenal!










Not only did the children create stunningly beautiful envelopes, but crayons rescued our day. We finally found peace. Ahhhh. The incredible soul-soothing, smoothing powers of art.

It was one of those days . . . frustration, tears, too many needs that couldn't all be met at once, long lines in the cafeteria, a series of interruptions. We just never found our flow. A wise teacher once told me, as I was about to embark upon my first year of teaching (more than ten years ago!) that every once in a while, an afternoon of coloring with crayons is OK if that's what it takes to finish "one of those days" without harming children's bodies and feelings. I've never had to resort to a simple afternoon of coloring, but she was right about crayons. Crayons certainly smoothed the ruffled feathers of our day.


What We're Reading:
Leaves by David Ezra Stein
Simple Science: Leaves! by Vivian Fernandez
Why Do Leaves Change Color? (Let's-Read-And-Find-Out-About Science) by Betsy Maestro

A Great Book for Adults:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows--A novel told entirely through a series of letters.

A baby!

A baby! This little one snuck in on some cut flowers brought in from the garden by our Beautiful Classroom Manager. Oh, the excitement of this new addition to Room 28! Like most babies, this new little life spends its days eating and pooping until . . . but we watch anyway, with rapt attention.

Remember to vote!

As a preschooler, quietly coloring my way through coffee-infused League of Women Voters meetings, I was instilled with value for the democratic process. Not voting is the thing most likely to make my mother haunt me after she is gone. Since the time when I stood at eye-level with my mother's skirt while she pulled levers in a velvet-curtained booth on the stage of our neighborhood high school, I have understood that voting is both a right and a responsibility.

So I feel compelled to pass along this message to the young people with whom I spend time.

It helps that our school cafeteria is a polling place. The children are either asked to eat in the classroom or eat silently in the cafeteria, depending on the whim of the week. To help them understand why, we hold an election of our own, right here at "Precinct 28."

We begin with an election the way it might have been held when our country was newly independent. Each child receives a role: "You are Mr. Powell, a wealthy Catholic landowner." "You are Nancy, a slave on a tobacco farm." "You are Jonathan, a footman for the wealthy Crump family." "You are Mrs. Anderson, a widow who owns her own farm." A long line of citizens, not qualified to vote, are turned away from the polls. It makes an impression. (Of note is that elections were not by secret ballot in those days. Voters were often required to announce their choices aloud for the election clerk to record . . . while the wealthy and influential members of the community stood by, watching--and listening.)

Next, we talk about how voter qualifications have evolved during our country's history. To vote today, you must be over 18 and a citizen of the United States. We've come a long way, baby! To illustrate this change, we hop into our time capsule and fast-forward to a 2009 Kids' Favorites election.

Every citizen of Room 28 receives a Voter Registration Certificate and excitedly lines up at the polls.

The children sign in and vote by secret ballot.

After the ballot is proudly placed in the ballot box, each voter receives an "I voted today!" sticker (cleverly procured for the occasion by Mrs. D, Mistress of Procurement!).

Interestingly, one of our second graders suggested literacy as an additional voter qualification. "You also must be able to read." Hmmm. True, one must be able to read in order to be an informed voter. However, . . . I wondered if there was a law about this "on the books." When I went to vote this evening, I asked the Election Judge. I'll leave it to you to do a little digging to find out the answer yourself! Happy voting!

What We're Reading:

Granddaddy's Gift by Margaree King Mitchell

VOTE! by Eileen Christelow

Election Day (Rookie Read-About Holidays) by Patricia Murphy

Duck for President by Doreen Cronin

If I Ran for President by Catherine Stier

So You Want to Be President by Judith St. George

Pencil Amnesty Day

"Do you remember what Monday is . . . ?" Mrs. D asked as we packed up the last of the Fall Festival fun.

I thought a moment . . . Hmm. Election Day is Tuesday . . . "Oh! Pencil Amnesty Day!"

If you are a teacher of young children (or maybe even older students), then you know: Pencils are a problem. After years of experimentation, I have finally come up with a solution. At the beginning of the year, I can be found skinning a sliver of paint from each of close to one-hundred pencils. (Honestly, it passes the time during some of those start-of-school in-services and makes me feel as if I'm doing something to prepare for The First Day of School.) Each child receives four pencils, with his or her name written with Sharpie in the bare-wood window. (At first, I tried writing directly on the pencil with Sharpie, but that too easily rubs off. Hence, my maniacal peeling of pencil paint.) Why, you ask, would you do such a thing?

Well, first there's the "I don't have a pencil!" and the "Hey, that was my pencil!" and the "_______ took my pencil!" and the "I don't want to use this one. It doesn't have any eraser left," and then the "Whose pencil is on the floor?"--"Not me!"

Sometimes you just need your very own tools. So everyone gets their own, and everyone is responsible for managing their pencils. If you break it, you are responsible for placing it in the "to be sharpened" cup. If you rub the eraser to a nub because you like the way those wormy little pink erasings look or you use your teeth to crimp the metal ring so that the eraser pops out whole, then you who must live with the inconvenience an eraser-less pencil. (Before you judge me as a queen of mean, know that each child also has his/her very own big pink eraser. I fully acknowledge that making mistakes and correcting them is an important part of learning.) If a pencil is left on the floor, it's easy to discover its owner. If an adult absentmindedly wanders off with a pencil, borrowed from a child's desk, they recognize it as ours and return it.

But here's the biggest benefit of not sharing pencils among children: Sometimes pencils get really gross. We're talking don-the-gloves, get-the-roadkill-bone-plucking-pliers, HazMat gross. Think of what this pencil's petri dish could culture! No one else wants to use a pencil that's all beaver-chewed and slobbered upon. So pencils are personal. If you want to gnaw on your pencil until it's rodentia-raided, destined-for-a-dam* disgusting, be my guest (though I do worry about the pencil paint that some children must be ingesting!). It's yours . . . and no one else has to touch it! (*a beaver dam--My own mother thought I had misspelled a word here!)

Though Mrs. D is willing to admit that I've successfully solved the pencil problem, she also thinks I'm pencil-petty--stingy, even. "They should be more responsible with their pencils. We gave them FOUR," I argue. But Mrs. D is a pencil pushover. "They NEED new pencils," she pleads. And thus, Pencil Amnesty Day was born. As part of my gift to Mrs. D, every year on her birthday, we celebrate Pencil Amnesty Day. Everyone (regardless of how responsible--or irresponsible--s/he was with the originals) gets brand new pencils!

Happy Pencil Amnesty Day! (Bet that's not on your Hallmark calendar . . . )

Something wacky

this way comes


"If a red-haired teacher in a funny dress shows up at your school--start packing!"

The children began asking early this year. "Do you think we'll be needing a substitute . . . ?" "Do you think Ms. Frizzle will come?" Even the adults at our school were wondering, "Sooo . . . is Ms. Frizzle visiting this year? What topic is she especially interested in right now?" Every year about this time, I get a bit of a scratchy throat. Fortunately, Ms. Frizzle usually jumps at the chance to substitute in Room 28.

When I called in August to check in, Ms. Frizzle was distraught. Her seamstress had retired. And well, Ms. Frizzle is a bit high-maintenance when it comes to clothing. Off-the-rack just won't do!

I'm not sure what compelled me to say yes. I've already got plenty on my plate and my sewing skills are seriously slim (limited mostly to the button-sewing I learned in my Montessori kindergarten class). "Oh, but I hate to disappoint the children," despaired the Friz. How could I say no after that? We made an agreement. I would serve as her new seamstress if she agreed to substitute in Room 28, should a need arise . . .

The fun begins at the fabric store. Selecting just the right fabric is serious business for the Friz. But the real fun starts when she takes the bolt to the counter to be cut. "What are you making?" idly inquires the fabric cutter, as she unrolls our bright bolt of printed fabric. "A dress," Ms. Frizzle responds matter-of-factly. A look of pained deliberation passed over the fabric lady's face. I could tell she was debating between selling us fabric or rescuing us from a frightening fashion faux pas. Where did her allegiance lie? When the Friz wandered off to look at some stegosaurus-shaped buttons, I quietly explained who she was and why a person might need to make a dress of say, glittery solar system fabric. The fabric lady breathed a sigh of relief that was almost audible. Her whole body relaxed. "Ohh."

"What's the matter with the clothes I'm wearing?"

Many thanks to Ms. Frizzle's former seamstress for helping me learn to do it myself! and for finishing the hem . . . and thanks to the seamstress's helpful husband who engineered the technical details of the Friz's many accoutrement!

Now, for the next dress . . .



What We're Reading:
The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System by Joanna Cole
The Graves Family by Patricia Polacco
The Vanishing Pumpkin by Tony Johnston
The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams
My Mama Says There Aren't Any Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires, Creatures, Demons, Monsters, Fiends, Goblins, or Things by Judith Viorst
Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler

Weight watchers

"It's losing weight!"

No, our apples are not observing some sort of produce "point system" in an effort to slim down for summer, but we have been watching their weight (well, "mass").

Last week, we peeled apples,

carved a face,









and measured the mass.












Since then, we've been tracking the changes:


measuring the mass,







recording it in a chart,







and creating a line graph to depict the results.

Observation: "It's losing weight!"
Yes, the apples are steadily losing mass.
So the question of the day is: Why is matter doing a disappearing act? What's happening here?

We've noticed a few other changes as well:



"Ours has a beard! Ms. S, our apple has a beard!" (S.G., 1st grade)




Yes, indeed it does.





And this one, well--"I'm melting . . . . "








I feel sure that in a drier climate, this experiment would go in a far less disgusting direction . . . one that would not require wet wipes to clean excess "beard" from our balances. But then what fun would science be without a little "graphically gross" every now and then?

Candles & calaveras

I counted at least five butterflies swooping and looping in the garden yesterday. As we slowly ease into autumn, the monarchs migrate south to Mexico for the winter. For the indigenous Mexicans who celebrate El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), the butterflies represent the souls of ancestors returning to earth for the three day holiday. It's a beautiful image--butterflies and spirits. The butterflies seem so carefree and joyful, it lightens the spirit to see them. Dancing from flower to flower, they are a perfect pairing for Día de los Muertos, more celebratory than somber. Cheerful (and sometimes humorous) paper maché calaveras are depicted dancing and laughing and music-making. Ofrendas (or altars) are decorated with objects significant to the life and personality of the departed loved one, along with favorite foods and drinks. Villagers parade to graves festooned with marigold petals and candles for a cemetery celebration, sharing stories about the lives of dead relatives and friends.

When a second grader suddenly wrapped me in a waist-embrace yesterday, I asked, "Were you needing a hug?" "No, you were. You just looked down in the dumps. Your mouth was like this," pointing to downturned corners on her own mouth. I am often wowed by the wisdom of children--powerfully perceptive and compassionate. Sometimes my face does things without my knowledge or permission, but the truth is that I recently attended a memorial service for a longtime family friend who lived a passionate and energetic life. A close friend of my mother, she had a front row seat as I muddled through life, finding my way to adulthood, and was privy to many of my meanest moments--the ones I wish I could take back. Somehow she managed to forgive my foibles and love me anyway. In fact, it was she who once sent me (or rather, Crazy Hat Lady) an e-mail titled "Possum Sighting," with text that read, "Should you need more bones, put on your gloves and hurry over to Woodhead, diagonally across the street from Lanier MS (the SE corner). Another corpse awaits! I was on my bike, not equipped to scoop it up. I admire your dedication to science!" Before her death, she fantasized with a friend about having her ashes mingled with fireworks and shot into the air in an explosion of color and light. "There goes Gran!" A suitable send-off for a life lived out loud and in full color.

But I think she would have liked the butterfly idea, too--a spirit free to flutter on the wind, dancing out its days.




What We're Reading:
The Spirit of Tío Fernando: A Day of the Dead Story by Janice Levy
Day of the Dead by Tony Johnston
Calavera Abecedario by Jeanette Winter
A Gift for Abuelita: Celebrating the Day of the Dead by Nancy Luenn
Diwali (Rookie Read-About Holidays) by Trudi Strain Trueit

The White Glove

Classroom cleaning is a part of our Friday afternoon routine. Each child is charged with a specific shelf of materials to dust and straighten, with a few managing other tasks, such as washing the desks and dusting the blinds. The idea is to develop responsibility and a sense of classroom ownership among the students (and also maintain the myriad materials in our classroom). When children began to announce--very early during our time allotted for cleaning--that they were finished, I knew just what to do.

This is a job for . . . The White Glove! A new student laughed as I went to fetch it from the closet, but another assured her, "Oh, no--she's really got one. I heard about it from my sister."

Ah, the much-storied White Glove. It is presented with much drama and wide-eyed, hand-over-gaping-mouthed horror at any dust found . . . and it is received with much excitement and giggling. There's no hiding dirt from The White Glove. The White Glove is sly, slinking around in corners, able to detect dust in the most forgotten of spaces.

The child charged with managing our chapter books shelf boldly proclaimed her shelf was ready for The White Glove test. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Are the chapter books in alphabetical order? Because The White Glove also knows how to alphabetize . . . "

"Man, that White Glove is clever!" she muttered in amazement.

Matter Mysterious

Oh, dear!
What can the matter be?








No sooner had I introduced the rules for classification of matter to first graders than I pulled the rug out from under them and presented the children with samples of a substance that doesn't follow the rules. Sometimes it's awfully fun to be the trickster . . .



I set the stage by reading a portion of Bartholomew and the Oobleck, just until we got to the part where Oobleck was raining down, gooping up the entire Kingdom of Didd, including all available warning systems. What's a king (or rather, his seemingly wiser young page Bartholomew) to do? Call upon a team of Matter Experts, of course. Bartholomew rushed some Oobleck samples right over to Room 28 so that our young Matter Scientists could have a look and determine just how Oobleck should be classified. Is it a solid or is it a liquid?

The investigation was on!

What happens when you smack the surface with a spoon? What happens when you just set the spoon on the surface?






What happens when you try to stir vigorously? What if you stir gently?













Does it pour? Does it drip?
What happens when it spills?








What happens when you squeeze some in your hand?
Can you roll it into a ball?







What happens when you release your hand?


Can you slice it with a knife?



Raucously messy fun!
Mrs. C still chuckles about the time she strolled through Room 28 during an Oobleck investigation only to hear me saying (uncharacteristically urgent and shrill, as Oobleck splattered into the air and rained down onto the recently replaced carpet), "Whatever investigation you're doing, Please STOP Investigating Oobleck In That Manner!"

"Go make the oobleck tumble down
On every street, in every town!
Go make the wondrous oobleck fall! Oh, bring down oobleck on us all!"

After the children and I reviewed the evidence for classifying Oobleck as a solid and the evidence for classification as a liquid, we looked for a pattern across the situations in which Oobleck behaves like a solid. Under what conditions does Oobleck act like a solid? . . . Under pressure

A few years ago, when I discussed Oobleck with my retired-chemist father, he made a comment that I used last week to push the children's thinking further. "What would happen if we tried to pump Oobleck?" Given what we've learned about Oobleck, the children hypothesized that it wouldn't work very well in a pump. "If you use a lot of force on Oobleck, it turns into a solid. When the pump pushes on the Oobleck, I think it's going to act like a solid." (A first grader, no less!)

Of course, all talk and no action is not the way we operate in Room 28. Not satisfied with mere speculation, we had to check it out for ourselves! While the children were in Music, I transferred some Oobleck to an empty soap dispenser. The Oobleck flowed easily through the funnel, but when we tried to pump it out, it was an entirely different story. Push as we might, only a small amount of liquid that had separated out dribbled from the pump. Yep, my dad was right. "Dilatants really do a number on pumps!"

Next up was Microscopic Matter Theatre. Child actors take the role of molecules to demonstrate the states of matter. First, solid molecules stand packed close together, moving only slightly in place. Liquid molecules stand father apart, easily slipping and sliding past each other. Finally, fast-moving gas molecules bounce around the room--over here, now over there, with lots of space between each other. So the challenging question of the day is . . . what's going on with the molecules of a non-Newtonian fluid like Oobleck?

To wrap up our Oobleck investigation, I asked each group to design a spacecraft that could land on and take off from Oobleck. Their ideas were ingenious, all based in our observations of the properties of Oobleck! Their illustrations are equally wonderful. One group proposed a spaceship with break-away pogo sticks. The pogo sticks would bounce on the Oobleck, causing it to become a solid long enough for the spaceship to take off, at which point the pogo sticks would break off. Another group separately invented a ship with paddles at the bottom to hit the Oobleck. A third group's spaceship is designed with a giant spoon attached to a mechanical arm at the top of the craft, which comes down and smacks the surface of the Oobleck. By George, I think they've got it!


Several of the children have pleaded with me, "Ms. S, will you post the recipe for Oobleck on the blog so we can make some at home?" Hmmm. I'm not sure I should reveal my secrets. . . . Well, if you insist, but only because I know you love science so much!

1) Place 1 cup cornstarch in a bowl.
2) Add a drop or two of food coloring, if you wish.
3) Add about 1/2 cup water slowly, mixing the cornstarch and water with your fingers until all the powder is wet. (If you tap the surface with a finger or a spoon and it splashes, it's too wet. Add a little more cornstarch. If it doesn't pour easily, add a little more water.)
4) Get ready to investigate!

These guys took their Oobleck investigation a step further . . .

You may not be able to fill up a pool with Oobleck, but you can try heating it or freezing it! "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" (Ms. Frizzle, The Magic School Bus).


What We're Reading:
Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss
What Is the World Made of? All About Solids, Liquids, and Gases by Kathleen Zoehfeld
KIDS DISCOVER Matter
KIDS DISCOVER Solids and Liquids


Resources:
Oobleck: What Do Scientists Do? (Grades 4-8 GEMS Teacher Guide) by Cary Sneider