Wampanoag Adventures

Students are currently immersed in Wampanoag history, life and culture. Our social studies books have taken the boys and girls back to Wampanoag life before the Pilgrims' arrival in 1620. Once the English "coatmen" arrived, life was very different and would never be the same. 

Students have learned that the first Thanksgiving was much more than a  dinner with lots of food. They have been differentiating between the myths and facts of this historical harvest celebration. 

Today, the boys and girls created their very own Native American names! They displayed them along with a special symbol on a piece of "animal hide". 

This was followed up with a Wampanoag journal activity, where students wrote about a day in the life of a Wampanoag child. 

Using facts from gathered from various sources, they created some very believable entries, complete with wetus, mishoons, and the three sisters. 

Wampanoag families dressed differently in winter than in summer.

Here are some homemade wetus!

Here are a few great links to check out at home:

Scholastic Virtual Field Trip: http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/webcast.htm

Plimoth Plantation Just for Kids:    http://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids

Science Fun

We are getting ready to wrap up our "Matter" unit in science. 

Here's what we have been exploring!

Two-pan balances were used to find the mass (in grams) of various solid objects.

Corn syrup, water, and vegetable oil were combined to make density bottles. 

The boys and girls predicted what would happen when they combined the liquids.

Can you guess which liquid was the most dense?

Students used graduated cylinders to measure the volume of liquids in cubic centimeters.

Great teamwork and focus all around!

Students can check out more fun experiments at Steve Spangler's website: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments

Pumpkin Exploration!

5 little pumpkins, sitting on a fence... Remember that little ditty? 

On Halloween, students took five pumpkins, both big and small, and took part in a fun and engaging "pumpkin exploration". They estimated, measured, observed and graphed their way through the activity, while learning so much about these orange fruits. 

Did you know that pumpkins are fruits?! 

That was the first of many interesting facts we discovered on this exciting day. Thanks to several parent volunteers, each group created a jack o' lantern and tried some pumpkin seeds the next day. Yum!

Does a pumpkin float? Yes!

We counted over 1,000 seeds in all!

Using their knowledge about the scientific method, students made predictions and formed a hypothesis before finding the results.