Our Hair Raising Experiments!

It is getting colder each week.  Please remind your child to bring appropriate outerwear as we will be out for recess as often as possible.  As chance would have it, Briarcliff has not only a great view of the river and city, but also gets every gale force wind that sweeps through the area. LOL! 

We started our day by meeting our newest Quirkle, Ellie Electricity.

In this week's experiment, the students explored static electricity and learned when objects have the same charge, the repel each other and when they have an opposite charge, they attract each other.  Ask your child about their observations during our experiment.

 We also discussed other forms of energy and spent some time looking at how magnet poles react to one another.

Next, we discussed our Global Snowman Card Exchange.  I show the students the map from the previous blog post and told them about the cards we will be designing.  Next we learned to use this map and Google Earth to explore the locations of the schools.  In the lab, the students learned to "fly in" and in many cases, were able to see the front of the school building and the houses in and around the area of the school.  The students noticed that some schools are smaller than others, some are in rural areas or very small towns, while others are in the center of metropolitan areas.  Some schools are along the coast, near the ocean or great lakes and some are in desert areas with palm trees.  It will be even more interesting when we have made a personal connection with a class.

In the afternoon, the students worked on their mathematical problem solving skills in the TOPS Math or Math Rules Programs.  We also spent some time working at our individual Exploratory areas.  This was the first week of Exploratory for several newer students.  Ask your child about their center choice and the specific task on which they are currently working.

We ended our day by beginning to create the individual snowman cards that we will send on December 9th to our exchange partners.  I know we will have some exciting conversations and learning that come about from this project.  I have encouraged the students to explore the maps at home as our lab time is very short.

Have a wonderful weekend!