Presenting ... the EXPLORERS!

...and, of course, the NAVIGATORS, singing "The Continent Song."  This one's for all of you who were not able to attend this morning's Gathering:

Sorting Treasures

We have been sorting through our new treasure collection (thanks, families, for your contributions!), matching things up by different characteristics and attributes in order to organize the collection (which we will be using as a math tool throughout the year) and sharing our ideas about what we see, and different ways to categorize things. This was not only a math exploration, but also an introduction to the taxonomy of animals, our current Science unit.

We love to read!

We have had fun hearing from everyone about their favorite books ... these include DragonBreath, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Heidi Heckelbeck, among others. Several Explorers got so interested by the short introduction to different books that they checked a copy out of the library. We will continue to do these "Book Talks" throughout the year to share our great reads and excite interest in a variety of different books. We have a "Reading Circle" of different genres in our Reading Journal, and Mrs. M has challenged the Explorers to try to read one book from each category this year. 

We read a bit on our own every day, and are currently listening to Mrs. M read "The Twenty One Balloons," a Newberry Medal fantasy-adventure by William Pene Du Bois which relates the amazing and whimsical tale of Professor William Waterman Sherman's disastrous balloon trip, and his dramatic collision with the diamond-rich, volcanic island of Krakatoa and the eccentric, innovative society of people who live there.

Continent Maps

One of our projects this week was making maps of the continents and oceans. (Ask your Explorer to sing you the song we learned to memorize the continents; we'll be performing this with the Navigators at Gathering next week.) Note the beautiful details like compass roses, sailing ships, sea serpents and other mythical creatures ("Beyond here there be dragons"). We folded this map in the center to show how the early explorers thought they would sail from Europe to the Indies and then ran into the New World instead -- Surprise! Just goes to show that sometimes mistakes can lead to amazing discoveries.

Building a Solar Compass

We had to wait for the sun to come back this week, but we were well rewarded! In order to understand how early explorers figured out where they were going, Navigators and Explorers made their own magnetic compasses with magnetized pins and waxed paper in bowls of water, and then went outside periodically to mark the shadows of a water bottle to create the W-E compass line and build a solar compass. What a great way to enjoy the sunshine!

"My Journey" Sailing Ship

Our first big project has been to create a sailing ship based on the Caravel used by early explorers. Each of the twelve sails carries a fact about each Explorer - their age, favorite color, favorite food, number & type of pets, number of siblings, etc. They are meant to be a visual story about each of us. Look for them soon, sailing through the stairwell!

We also used the data gathered from these artworks to create graphs of information about our classes. We learned things like: There are more 7 year-olds than 6 year olds in the Explorers class. Two of the Navigators have parakeets as pets (like Pirates of old) AND more people in the Explorers class have dogs as pets than any other type of pet combined.

Graphing data about numbers of brothers and sisters (0, 1 and 2)

The yellow bar is the number of students with 2 brothers and/or sisters.

Figuring out which manipulatives will help with calculations.

Representing ages using Base Ten units.

A graph showing Navigator's favorite foods.

Sharing strategies and products.