Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Rocks from Utah!

Last week class 2-227 had a visitor during science class!  Julie Fry, Orla's mom, came and talked to the class about her trip to Arches National Park in Utah.  The park has more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches that have been made over time by rain!







Julie found some amazing rocks at Moab's Rock Shop and has kindly donated them to PS58's growing rock collection!  

Everyone liked the polished, colorful rocks!

The fossils were amazing!
And then we saw the geodes!



Everyone had their goggles on!

Orla cracked the Utah geode after a few good smashes with
the hammer!
Thank you so much for coming in Julie and sharing your experience at and photos of Arches National Park and the rocks you got at Moab's Rock Shop!

Saturday, November 4, 2017

2nd Annual Cardboard Challenge!

The Cardboard Challenge at PS58 today was another success!  It was wonderful to see so many families build amazing creations out of cardboard!  

In case you are unfamiliar with the Cardboard Challenge, here is a link to Caine's arcade that started the whole movement! http://cainesarcade.com/


And it begins!


Cardboard and building everywhere!


The arch with a sculpture on top!

A tree house!

Adventure boy's backpack!


A fire breathing dragon!

Cardboard creations in the lobby!

 Such a fun morning!  I can't wait for next year!


Saturday, October 21, 2017

Gardening with Kindergarteners!

With the growing success of our school garden, this year we are beginning something new!  One of my missions has always been to get more students into and using the garden. After spending the day last fall at PS 216, an Edible Schoolyard demonstration school, I thought the Edible Schoolyard curriculum would be an exciting program for our school!

First we used four of our senses to explore the garden.  The classes drew a picture of something they saw, smelled, felt and heard in the garden.












Some of the classes noticed the plants in the garden are starting
to look a little wilted!

The next time we went out to the garden, we learned about the different tools that we use to help keep the garden healthy!

The cultivator or claw helps loosen the soil.

Watering cans help us water all parts of the garden!

When using the rake, we have to be careful. 
They are big!



Placing the leaves in the wheelbarrow
so we can bring them over to the compost bin.



Most recently, we have been talking about harvesting vegetables from our garden.  How do we know if something is ripe or not?  Why would we weight our vegetables?  We made different combinations on the balance scales to see which vegetables were heavy and which vegetables were light.











Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Pre-K Explores!

Pre-K has started investigating objects in science through their 5 senses.  Sometimes we use one or two of our senses to learn about something, other times we may use more than two!  We haven't used our sense of taste yet, but we did notice that some of the critters have!


The wood feels bumpy.

These mealworms aren't squishy!


Looking closely!

The biggest pinecone ever!

Looking very closely at the snail who is looking very closely!


Touch bags!  What does this feel like?




The paper is crinkly! 

This feels....hard!

Hello there snail!

This feels....soft!  It's a feather.

The pine cone is prickly and kind of squishy.

Looking at apples...do they make a sound?


Look at that worm!


Looking at half an apple.


Ah!  It wiggles!!


The apple smells good!

It is so long now!