Day Nineteen

Today was an intense day in Number the Stars. The Nazis came to the Johansen's house in the middle of the night (4am) in search of Ellen and the rest of the Rosen family. Ellen said she was Lise Johansen, but the Nazis questioned her dark hair because Kirsti and Annemarie both have blond hair. Luckily Papa Johansen was quick on his feet and ripped out three baby photos (one of each girl). When Lise was a young girl she had dark curls, just like Ellen does. Papa had to rip the pictures out of the album because the Nazis would have seen the real Lise's birthday (she would have been 21) and Ellen is only 10. Thankfully, the Nazis couldn't argue with the picture so they left the house and Ellen is safe...for now...

Day Eighteen

As we finished up our tide pool studies this week, we created a large tide pool mural in the hallway. The mural is a collection of pictures/photos, information, and drawings. Using these different mediums, we were able to recreate what we saw yesterday at Moose Point. Everyone was responsible for creating a rock and at least two tide pool creatures. In the end, the mural came out great.

Day Seventeen

Today was AMAZING!! We spent the day exploring the tide pools at Moose Point State Park. The weather was great and we found lots of creatures. Of course there was a ton of seaweed and along with many barnacles and snails/periwinkles, but we also found many crabs, starfish, gunnel fish, and mussels. We had a "competition" between the three classes (Angst, McDade, and Miller) to find the first living sea urchin, and Mrs. McDade's class won. They actually found two sea urchins. Finding creatures wasn't easy, but if you dared to flip over a rock or lift up seaweed, you usually found something interesting.

Day Sixteen

Since tomorrow is our field trip to explore the tide pools at Moose Point State Park, student pairs presented their research posters on some of the creatures we might encounter tomorrow. The posters focused on eight different creatures: crabs, barnacles, sponges, starfish, mussels, periwinkles, clams, and sea urchins. Within each group, research focused on finding information in 4 major areas: habitat, predators/prey, adaptations, and interesting facts. Everyone did a great job with this project and the presentations today. With all our new knowledge, we are reading to go tide pooling tomorrow!

Day Fifteen

As part of our preparation for our tide pool adventure coming up on Thursday, we examined different mollusk shells today. Some of the things we learned are that there are 2 different types of mollusks, bivalves (2 shells) and univalves (1 shell). Using detailed descriptions of each type of shell, students were able to match each shell with its name. We also labeled sample bivalves and univalves. Some of the new words we learned are: siphon tubes (used to get food and get rid of waste), operculum (how univalves hide themselves in their shell, like a door), hinge (where the 2 shells in a bivalve are connected together to open and shut), and foot (how the mollusk moves).

Day Fourteen

In math today we started chapter 2, which involves data and statistics. As part of our work this chapter we will be doing a class project called the Average Student Project. Today we just got an overview of the project and practiced measuring in centimeters. When the project is complete, we will turn our data into a "person" using the average (either the mean, median, or mode) of our data to create our Average Math Student. Let the project begin!

Day Thirteen

A week from today we are going on our field trip to Moose Point State Park to explore the tide pools. To prepare us for the creatures we might see, students are doing a bit of research on some common tide pool creatures: sponges, sea urchins, mussels, clams, starfish, crabs, periwinkles, and barnacles. Today we spent some time gathering information from a variety of books, handouts, and websites. Once we finish our research we will display the information on a poster and then present our findings to the class.