Run, run as fast as you can...

Yesterday we had a gingerbread day in gifted! We wrote our own versions of the classic Gingerbread Man, we made gingerbread glyphs, and ate "gingerbread man" cookies(actually sugar cookies in the shape of gingerbread men. We had so much fun and learned a lot to! I promise to update the blog with the many activites we have been doing in gifted. Coming soon...our FABULOUS heritage projects!!! I was wowed by the student's knowledge and presentations! We are working on putting it all in a voicethread so that you to can learn about our heritages as well. Stay tuned...

Shanghai Circus

We are going to the Shanghai Circus on November 19! In order to secure our tickets we have to purchase them next week! Permission slips have gone home and some have already been returned. If you have not sent your child's permission slip and money in please do so ASAP! Just send it in your child's regular classroom folder addressed to me and I will get it. If you would like to chaperone please send in $9.50 for your ticket. Thank you! I realize that most of you have just paid for another field trip, I promise this is it until January. I do not want anyone to miss out on this fabulous event. Please let me know if you are unable to pay and I will take care of it.

Great Gifted Resource

Here is a fabulous website about gifted children!
www.hoagiesgifted.org

Matter!

Today we talked about matter. We reviewed the three states of matter-solid, liquid, and gas and we conducted an experiment to find out what happens when air is heated or cooled. Ask me about what I did! Check out this cool way to review the three states of matter!

To learn more check out this cool video and song!

Molacules!

2 weeks ago we tried to make molacules.It did not work becouse we did not have the right matiereals we used stiraphone cps instead of plastic cups nothing hapend.This week we are useing plastic cups instead of stieraphone cups we do not no what will hapen we are hoping that we will have rock candy!A molacule is anything!A bike is made of molacules a grain of salt is made of molacules. Everything in the world is made out of molacules.

By:Sameh

New Open House Date

Remember our new Open House date is this Tuesday, October 13th at 6:30pm in our classroom. I hope you can join us! Family Night at the Book Fair runs from 6-8 Tuesday as well, make plans to stop by the media center and check out all the great books!

Open House!

Open House is this week! Please join us Thursday, October 1st at 6:30pm so that your children can show you what they do in gifted.

Mad Science!

All grade levels love "Mad Science!" My goal this year is to do a lot more science labs because the kids love it so much and it sparks their interest to learn new things. While I don't mind supplying materials for our labs it usually involves me raiding my pantry and too much of that leaves my cupboards pretty bare! I am going to list everyday things that we will be using in future science labs and if you can send ONE of them in I would greatly appreciate it! To avoid me having 10 containers of salt and 0 food coloring would you please put what you are sending under "comments?" That way everone can see what has been sent. THANKS A MILLION!!!!
salt
craft sticks
plastic spoons
epsom salt
food coloring
string
cotton balls
straws
colored chalk
coffee filters
cornstarch
toothpicks

1st Graders Are Rockin!

We had a fabulous day in gifted today! Our 15 first graders spent the day learning the routines and expectations for our class. We also spent some time getting to know all of our unique classmates when we completed and shared our "All About Me" page. We read a book called "If I Were a Noun" and played a noun guessing game. Ask your child to play it with you! "Line Designs" were made after discussing the art element of line and reviewing vertical, horizontal, and parallel lines. After asking the class what a scientist looked like I received answers like: "they have a white coat", "they have black shoes", "they have brown hair." The students were then told if they wanted to know what a scientist looked like they needed to look around them. We are all scientists! We are curious about the world around us, we have questions and we make guesses and we experiment all the time to find out how things work. The students took part in a little science lab discovering colors. Overall it was a great first day of gifted for the year! Thank you for sending your child to gifted prepared and for all of the generous donations of supplies I we recieved! Don't forget to send in your child's digital release form so that I can begin posting pictures next week!

2nd Grade Had a Musical Monday!

Our 2nd grade class is rockin and rollin! We welcomed a new student, Sameh, to our class and we had a great day being back in class with all of our friends. We started the day with a "Waker Upper" to stretch our minds and get us thinking. "Our Symphony" was next and we spent some time going over expectations for the class and also ways to earn points and agreed on things we would work towards. We also spent some time getting to know our fellow musicians as we completed our picture page for our gifted folder filled with all of our favorite things. Using our flexible thinking and creativity we also wrote acrostic poems using only adjectives to describe ourselves. "Mad Science" time was spent talking about the scientific method and putting the steps in order. We used our keen observation skills to describe sharks teeth and had to remember which one we observed when they were all mixed up. I know we are going to have an amazing year in gifted! Thank you for all of the generous donations of supplies! Don't forget to send your child's digital release form back to me so I can start posting pictures next week.

Singing Our Way Into a New Year!

I am all jazzed up and ready to rock and roll into a new year in gifted!! Be sure to stop by the room on Orientation Day. I would love to see you and I need you to help me with our outside bulliten board.
Gifted will begin on Monday, August 31st!
Gifted Days for this year:
Monday- 2nd
Tuesday K/1
Please bring a regular composition book and an art shirt(this does not have to be new)! Our lunch is a little later than it was last year so be sure to bring a snack! I can't wait to see you!

Bubbles!

Bubbles, bubbles everywhere! Today was filled with bubbles! Through our scientific play with bubbles we learned that adding soap to water weakens the pull of the surface tension and makes the surface of the water much stretchier. It spreads out enough for you to blow air inside-it's a bit like blowing up balloons. A bubble will burst when it's film gets so thin it can no longer contain the air inside. The colors we see depend on the thickness of the bubble's skin. Blue-green is the thickest, followed by blue(thinner), magenta(even thinner), and yellow-white(very thin). When the film appears black(or transparent), it is at it's very thinnest and is about to pop. You can guess the longevity of a bubble by observing its color. At that point, the bubble will be one millionth of an inch thick. We observed bubbles, measured bubbles, compared bubble solutions, made bubble blowers, and had lots of bubbly fun!!

Creativity

A large part of what we do has to do with being critical and creative thinkers. We focus on the characteristics of different types of critical and creative thinking: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, originality, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, risk taking, complexity, curiosity, and imagination. Today we focused on three of these characteristics: Flexibility results in many different kinds of ideas. The purpose of flexible thinking is to generate and promote responses that deviate from normal thought patterns. Elaboration is the creative thinking behavior that results in adding to or embellishing an idea. It is the ability to add details, fill in the gaps, build a group of related ideas and expand ideas. Originality is the creative thinking behavior that produces new or novel responses. Originality is often the by product of other creative thinking behavior. Most of all today we discussed how creativity can simply mean looking at the ordinary and seeing the extraordinary.

Top 40!

Wow! I am so proud of everbody and what a fantastic job they did in our 3 performances of our Top 40 Musical! The show was outstanding and I was amazed by our fabulous performers. I did not get the chance to take many pictures so I would love to get pictures sent to me so that I can out them together for a slide show. Stay tuned for more about the musical...

Musical is Coming Soon!

Our gifted musical is fast approaching! Please mark your calendars...Evening performance January 22nd 7:00pm and morning performances January 23rd K-2 9:30am and 3-5 10:30am. Please join us for some "Top 40" tunes!