Ants, Ants, Ants

We did a little experiment this morning as we were reading our ant story.  We added some seeds that they ants eat on one side of the farm and added some cookie crumbs on the other side to see what they liked more.  I think they just like anything to eat. 

The kids wrote some stories about all the different jobs that ants have.  A few students chose to have me share their stories on the blog.

Ant Jobs 

By Anna Atchison

Ants have many different jobs that they have to work together to get done.  Let's start with the queen ant, her job is to lay eggs and the queens goal is to make lots and lots of babies.  Let's go on to the worker ants.  The worker ants have lots of jobs, they pick up food, protect the colony and scoop up dirt to build tunnels.  Let's go on to the scouts.  The scouts look for food and then the scouts call the workers to help them carry all the food back to the nest and to find food is a very dangerous journey.  The ants get very joyful when they find food and the discovery they make when they find food and take it from humans is very cool. The humans are unaware of their food being gone.  When the ants get back to the nest it only takes a few weeks for the food to disappear. 

Ant Jobs

By Lacey Bloom

Ants have many different jobs that they have to work together to get done.  A lot of ants called workers have to build tunnels.  the ant workers have to pick up food and carry it back to their home.  Worker ants also protect their colony so enemies don't get in.  The queen ant lays the eggs and rules the home.  The scout ants find food and show the worker ants.  The ants think that sugar is crystals and carry it back.  The scout ants disappear in the grass to get food the scout ants are unaware of spiders.  The workers scoop up the crystals and take a journey back to their home.  The worker ants have a goal to get food to the queen ant.  The scout ants have a lot of discovery to find food.  The ants will all be joyful. 

Ant Jobs

By Jalyn Thome

Ants have many different jobs that they have to work together to get done.  Since ants have jobs they are unaware of people because they are always working.  When somebody gives the ants food they are joyful and scoop it up to take it to their home or to store ti somewhere.  When they dig their tunnels in an ant farm they are kind of taking a journey around it.  the ants scoop up food and after you look it there it has disappeared and if you give them a ball of sugar then it is a crystal to them.  When they have no tunnels at all on day one and day two it is filled with tunnels that means they are females and they are called workers and it is a discovery to us that a lot changed in one day.  It is the ants goal to keep the queen happy.  Ants have a lot of jobs.  

We finally were able to plant our garden with Mr. McKinney's class.  We plants peas, radishes, kohlrabi, spinach, lettuce, and 2 tomato plants.  It will be interesting to see if any of it comes up before school is out.  I believe some kids and teachers might take care of them this summer so hopefully in the fall we will have some fresh vegetables.

Ant Farm Day 12

I believe this is Day 12 of the ant farm.  In our story today it discussed how ants make rooms that are part of their tunnel system.  The two blue areas are what appear to be rooms that they have created.  One of them actually has a stockpile of food in it. 

Spelling Words

This week we are reading a story that is an animal fantasy about ants.  This story is the one that ties into our ant farm and will allow us to talk about a few different science things.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate this week and we will be able to get our garden planted.  In math this week we will start by reviewing what we have learned the last several weeks and then be taking our Unit 9 test.  

The spelling words for this week are following.

leadership, gracefully, refreshment, uncomfortable, overdoing, remarkable, carefully, unbearably, ownership, unacceptable, impossibly, reappeared, unprepared, oncoming, misbehaving, outrageous, incomprehensible, undoubtedly, independence, disadvantage

Ant Farm Day 9

The ants have been busy and so have we.  This week in reading we are reading a story about a man that keeps a bird as a pet.  Ask your student what the story is all about. 

In math we continued working on multiplication and learned a new method called bow-tie multiplication.  There will be homework over the lattice method which we also worked on today. 

In the middle of all that we squeezed time to go to the middle school and watch a 5th grade band concert with the 4th graders.  We took advantage of the nice afternoon and walked back to school. 

If the ground dries out  yet this week we will be planting our garden box with Mr. McKinney's class. 

If you scroll down and look at yesterday's picture of the ants you can see that they were very busy carrying a lot of sand up to the top.  I am beginning to think that the warm weather gets them energized and moving.  

Ant Farm Day 8

Bridge Building

Today in math we used pieces of paper to build bridges.  We stacked up books and the kids had to build a bridge out of a single piece of paper.  We then had a competition to see whose would hold the most.  Below are some pictures of the bridges. Simon won our competition with his bridge holding 22 miniature erasers.  Isaac was a close 2nd with 21. 

Math

There is math homework tonight.  We have learned a new way to do multiplication.  Chances are the parents will not know how to do it unless you have heard of it before.  It is called lattice multiplication.  It is really pretty simple.  I am going to put a link here to a video that does a great job of explaining it. (I couldn't get the link to work so you will have to copy and paste it.  The link in the Links box at the right should work.)

http://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic/multiplication-division/v/lattice-multiplication

The website that the video is on is a great resources for learning how to do new things.  The videos are mostly math and science.  I will add it to the links box on the right side of this page.  This would be a great resource to share with any student of all ages.

Reading

Today in reading we talked about cause and effect.  Cause and effect should be a review skill for everyone as we have worked on it already this year.  Talk with your kids about causes and effects.  We also introduced the vocabulary words for this week which are bows, chilly, foolish, foreign, narrow, perches, and recipe.

Spelling Words

The spelling words for this week are listed below.  The test will be on Friday.  You child might be responsible for 1-8, 1-15, or 1-20.  It is important to study spelling words at home as we don't always take the time to study them here at school.  Everyone should be bringing home a list on a practice worksheet tonight.  above, another, upon, animal, paper, open, family, travel, afraid, nickel, sugar, circus, item, gallon, melon

Busy Day to end a Busy Week

This morning we took our reading test and spelling test.  The kids did a good job on the spelling test.  Everyone had 15 words this week and we had a lot of perfect scores.  I haven't had the opportunity to check the selection tests yet. 

We skipped math this afternoon and spent some time drawing a picture of what we thought Brian's shelter looked like.  Brian is the character in the book Hatchet which we read before we went on our field trip.  We are now reading Brian's Winter which is a sequel to the Hatchet. 

We then met with Mr. McKinney's class to learn about the gardening tools we will be using.  We have been paired up with Mr. McKinney's class to plant a planter box behind Sunset. 

The ants have remained busy.  We fed them yesterday after school and instead of eating the food they carried it all down the tunnel to save it in one spot.  It will be interesting to see what they do with it.

Despite the cold weather this weekend I hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend.  20 days left when we start up next week. 

Have a great weekend!!!

Test Tomorrow

Our Statue of Liberty test will be tomorrow.  We will also be having our spelling test.  Each student is responsible for all 15 words this week.  Study tonight! 

NO HOMEWORK

There is no homework tonight.  It would be a great night to practice math facts.  We also started some long division today.  Many of the kids said that their parents showed them how to do long division last night as they worked on the homework.  That is great!

Ant Farm Day 3

After another day of digging the ants have created a few more tunnels to crawl through.  The ants are carrying the sand from the tunnels up on the top side and that is making the hills on top a lot bigger.  We are undecided if the ants have a plan for their tunnels.  We think they might be working together but might not have a leader to tell them what and where to dig. 

Ancestors

This morning we spent a lot of time talking about our ancestors.  We have been reading a story about the Statue of Liberty and what that means to our country.  The story lends itself to talking about how people immigrated to America.  Hopefully your kids will ask you tonight where their ancestors are from.  I encourage you to have this discussion with your kids. 

Ant Farm Day 2

I couldn't believe how much the ant farm had changed in less than 24 hours when I got here this morning.  The last ants I had didn't do this much work.  I have different sand this time so I don't know if that is making a difference or if it is the warmer weather.  It is amazing to see how it changes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.

Math

Today in math we worked on some division story problems.  We used our calculators to help us and also worked on using multiplication to solve division problems.  There will be homework tonight in math.

DIBELS

This morning the kids did their Spring DIBELS assessment.  DIBELS is a one minute timed reading to see how many words they can read correctly in one minute.  We had a lot of improvement from our winter scores.  The goal for them to be at this time of year is 100 words correct per minute.  Some students will be there and some won't.  If they aren't quite there that is okay if they are comprehending what they are reading well.  Ask your child what their score was tonight. 

Follow...

....the class on twitter.  @mrbrimsclass

Homework

There IS homework today.  HomeLink 9.7

Spelling Words

We didn't have a pretest this week.  Every student will be responsible for 15 words this week. 
 
few, school, true, goose, fruit, cookie, cushion, noodle, bookmark, balloon, suit, chew, glue, Tuesday, bushel

Ant Farm

In a few weeks we are going to be reading a story about ants.  At the beginning of the year I had an ant farm as a trial run for this time of the year.  It worked out well except the life span of the ants is not as long as our school year.

The new ants came in today and I have decided to take a picture each day and post it on the blog as a place to keep track of their progress.  The sand in the bottom is different colors because it needs to be wet so it will stick together as the ants make their tunnels.  The sand is simply wetter in some spots than others and that causes the different colors.

This picture is what the ant farm looks like on DAY 1...
      (If you click on the picture you should be able to see a much larger image.)

News for the Week of April 23

I apologize once again for my absence from blogging.  With the end of the year right around the corner each and every day brings unexpected changes that make some days here at Sunset very hectic and busy.  I will try to keep you updated the best that I can for next few weeks. 

This week in reading we are working on our Unit 5 Benchmark test.  We will also be moving forward and starting Unit 6.  The first story in Unit 6 is about The Statue of Liberty and how it came to be.  We will be moving right along as we have four stories after The Stature of Liberty story to try and get through by the end of the year.

In math we are continuing to work on multiplication in a variety of ways.  The students are getting much better at their facts and I can tell that some of them have been working on them at home.  Please continue to work with them on their multiplication facts at home as it makes a huge difference. 

There will be a spelling test on Friday of this week and I will get the words up later.

Don't forget about the Spring Music Program that is being held at 7:30 this evening in the high school auditorium. 

Spelling Words

rocky, foolish, rainy, childhood, selfish, treatment, movement, neighborhood, childish, parenthood, crunchy, bumpy, payment, sleepy, shipment, assignment, livelihood, stylish, environment, guilty

Welcome Back!!

I hope everyone enjoyed having their kids home for the week.  It was a nice relaxing break before we begin our final push for the year.  We only have 6 weeks of school left for this year and it will be over before we know it.  It will be a fun and busy 6 weeks. 

Remember we will be going on a field trip this Thursday.  I will add the spelling words later on today.

Have a great week!! 

Happy April

Welcome to April!  Hard to believe that we only have 2 months of school left.  I hope everyone had a great week and will enjoy the upcoming break from school. 

We have a crazy, hectic, and busy week ahead at Sunset. 

Monday morning we had our monthly PBS assembly.  We learned at the entire school in the month of March received 31 ODRs.  Those 31 were received by 22 different students.  That means that over 90% of the students are doing what they are supposed to be doing on a daily basis. 

Tuesday we will spending some time at Fuller Hall as an acknowledgement for everyone giving their best effort on the Iowa Assessments test a few weeks ago.  Following the Fuller Hall trip we will be rewarding students with some ice cream and various toppings as a reward for how they performed on the MAP tests last week. 

Thursday morning will be the March PBS reward.  Each classroom will have a different activity in it and students from all grades will get to move around the building to do different activities.  We will then have an all school recess which is always fun. 

Our class will also be having a pizza party Thursday at lunch for those students who signed up last week. 

To finish our busy week we will be having a NED assembly on Thursday afternoon.  The NED assembly is put on by a company that specializes in promoting positive attitudes at school. 

Remember No School Friday or at all next week.