E Day World Travelers

We had an exciting, last minute field trip opportunity.  I guess I should have sent all the permission slip forms home, but it was a oversight on my part.  I just couldn't pass it up.  Today, the E Day SAGE students joined Ms. Webb and I on a  trip to Argentina.  I took care of arranging the necessary passport paper work, our bus arrived and we were off.  Jason had to be back by noon so he could make it to school for the 100's Day celebration, so our time was really short!  We had to make it a very quick trip.  The students made notes on along the way...

This picture was taken on our arrival in Argentina.  We even got our passport stamped!  We were pretty tired at this point, but geared up for our learning adventure as our day wore on!  We learned they speak Spanish here.  It is a good thing Senora Gates has been teaching us some basic vocabulary.  We were able to ask for a drink of water and where the restrooms were located.  We were pretty limited beyond that--  there wasn't time to do much shopping so we didn't get a chance to practice our number and color words.  

Argentina is a pretty amazing place.  The land is very different depending on where you are at in the country.  There are high mountains on the west side and ocean beaches on the east side.  

A few of us decided to climb a glacier off the southern coast.  (We should have brought a bigger coat!)  We even saw chunks of ice breaking off.  It was really loud!

A couple of us took a quick trip to the east coast to see the ocean.  It was really beautiful there!  Too bad we didn't have time for a swim.

A few of us hiked along the edge of the Andes mountains.  It was so cool!  We found some llamas running by a lake and a huge eagle was flying above us!  (Mrs. Koch said we had to stay back so we didn't get hurt- especially since she didn't have the permission slips!  She was really being cautious.)

The rest of us found a cool light house along the coast.  We wanted to go clear up to the top so we could look over the railing.   Mrs. Koch vetoed that too!  :-(

We grabbed a quick steak and headed home.  (Did you know the people in Argentina eat beef almost every day.  They have a lot of farms and ranches there.)

On the bus ride home, Mrs. Koch read us a folktale from Argentina: The Gentle People.  It was a really neat story about the beautiful land, the gentle, kind people and what they did when their way of life was threatened.  In the story, once a year, the Gentle People were granted one wish.  They always used it to make the world a better place.  We talked about what we might wish to make our world a better place.  Then we each wrote down our own wish.  Remind your child to tell you about his or her wish.  We slept the rest of the way home, so we wouldn't be too tired to do our work when we got back to school.

Once we were back at Briarcliff, we planted some wild flower seeds-- just like the flowers in the folktale!   We are hoping they will grow well in our classroom window.  We thought Mrs. Koch would let us rest, but oh no, she had lots of work for us!  We did have a good time on our trip to Argentina, you will have to ask us what all we learned!  We are hoping Mrs. Koch will take us somewhere cool next week too.  She said, "You never know...."

We took a quick recess break and went back to work.  We found a little free time available in the library.  We used it to practice our Power Point skills and to begin a travel journal on the computers.  We are going to add some of the field trip pictures so we can share them with you at our spring Open House.  Today we practiced/learned to open and save a new presentation.  We added a title to our travel journal and learned to format the font for color.  Lastly, we added a rectangle that filled the page, colored it and learned to send it behind our text.

In the Computer Lab, we had an opportunity to continue our stories in Storybird.  I am encouraging the children to continue their stories from home or from their home school when they are ahead in their work.   

Your child should know their username and password.  Email me if he/she is having any trouble logging in. 

This afternoon we met our newest Quirkle, Mary Motion.  We did an experiment using two eggs-- one raw and one hard boiled.  Ask your child to share their experiment log sheet with you and tell you what they observed and learned.

We ended our day with our Spanish lesson with Senora Gates.  

Now, they are tired!  I'm sure they will all be sleeping well tonight (and hopefully no one suffers from bus-lag.  LOL)

Have a great week!