Trout!

As part of our year-long study of water, we are raising trout from the eyed-egg stage until we release them as fry, in May. Katrina from Portland Water District came by with these awesome costumes to help us remember the stages in the trout life cycle, and the parts of an adult trout's anatomy.

Molly models the eyed-egg stage, while Brendon is wearing the yolk sac that the alevin have. Alevin get their food from their yolk sac. This is a good thing, since they don't have mouths yet!

Once the trout develop into the next stage, fry, they are starting to look more like trout. This stage is when they develop a mouth, which Shaunna is demonstrating.

Pamba is showing what the belly of the trout looks like. Trout have a variety of fins to help them swim around in the water.

If you look closely, you can see that Jimmy is wearing the caudal fin and caudal peduncle, which is the powerful muscle that attaches the caudal fin to the rest of the trout's body.

Notice, also, that Shaunna's head now has eyes. Trouts' eyes are on the sides of their heads. This allows them to have a wider range of vision to the side and back to look for food and watch out for predators.

Sydney shows what the complete trout looks like with all the parts.                                                                                                

Thanks, Katrina, for the cool lesson!

We can't wait until our trout hatch so we can see them develop for ourselves!

Handbell Concert

Check out our slideshow of the 4th Grade Handbell Concert!

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"Soup-er Bowl" Week

As part of our week-long Super bowl Math unit, we also had a "Soup-er Bowl", where we challenged our school to help us collect 100 yards of soups and other non-perishable food for the Preble Street Resource Center. 4th graders measured all the food, and we are happy to report that we exceeded our goal, collecting 113 yards of food. Below are pictures of the 4th graders with the truck that came to pick up the food.

Awesome job, everyone!

Measurement Games

We have started a measurement and geometry unit in math.    

Last week, students got to spend two days rotating through 10 different measurement stations. Here's a peek at some of them...

There was a map on the SmartBoard of the various measurement stations.

After estimating how far she could throw a cotton ball, Shaunna measures to see.

At the cup capacity station, you had to estimate how many teaspoons or Tablespoons would fit into a cup. We realized that it was important to fill each spoon all the way, or we got different results.

  

At the Bean Balance station, you had to predict how many cubes it would take to lift 1/4 cup of beans. We realized that we had different ideas about how high to fill the measuring cup, so our answers had a big range.

Ansly and Kasandra figure out the perimeter and area of the desktop in paper clips.

After estimating, Brenden and Peyton measure how far they could throw a straw. They then converted from feet to inches.

At the "Pick Your Perimeter" station, partners made 3 different rectangles,  trying to make the one with the largest perimeter, using 24 tiles. Students found out that the largest rectangle was 24 x 1, so it had a perimeter of 50. The smallest rectangle was 6 x 4, with a perimeter of 20. All of the rectangles had an area of 24.

Students got very different results at the "Bowl O' Cubes" station, where they first estimated how many cubes could fit in the bowl, and then tried it out. We realized that some students had better luck heaping cubes in the bowl without any falling, so that accounted for the differences.

So...what did we learn?

Along with getting a chance to practice estimating skills, and use of measurement tools, we learned how important it is to be clear and precise when you are measuring. You also need to be sure that everyone follows the same procedures, or you will get very different results!

Winter Candy Scenes

Check out our slideshow of our winter candy scenes. We had a blast making them! Thank-you to Tyler, Brenden, Michael, and Molly's moms for helping out, as well as Griffin's dad, and Lauren's aunt and sister. Thanks also to everyone for sending in the supplies. The kids made some amazingly creative scenes!

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