The Devil’s Arithmetic

The Devil’s Arithmetic is a great selection. We liked this book because it talked about real life things and gave good information about the people, the concentration camps, Nazi soldiers and more.

It is bout a girl named Hannah who is Jewish and at her family seder, she had some watered wine, and was rewarded by getting to open the door to the prophet Elija. However, when she opens the door she sees a field and a strange man walking in it. Then she turns to look at her family and they are gone. In their place is a woman and an ugly little house. Where is she? Is she dreaming? Hannah is in a Jewish shtetle and she is now a girl named Chaya. She knew this name because it was her Hebrew name because of aunt Eva’s childhood friend, Chaya. However, she doesn’t know the horrors that await her.

The Teacher’s Funeral

This book was about a group of boys. The boys want to run away. Then a few weeks before they start school their teacher dies. They look for a new teacher. Then Russell’s worst nightmare becomes their teacher. They are always worrying.
I recommend this book if you like comedy, but if you think comedy is not funny, then you shouldn’t read this book.
I think this was a very funny book. Other people may think different.

Island of the Blue Dolphins

The main idea of this book is a girl named Karana, and her brother Ramo, get left on an island and Ramo dies so she is living on the Island of the Blue Dolphins by herself. Now she has to gather food and water to survive. Also, she has to find or make shelter for herself. She finds a wild dog and tries to kill it, but it lives, so she takes it back to her home and it heals and becomes her pet dog. Later on in the book her animal friend dies so she goes to scout for a new one. When she finds one she names it Rontualoo.
So I guess I can’t tell you if she goes to the main land with her tribe, but read the book and sooner or later you will find out what happens! I thought this book was pretty good and if you like history and fiction, (historical fiction) I think you might like it as well as me.

Investigations Gone Frigid!

To see our pictures click here.
If you’re looking for a fun science investigation, you should try the almighty Ice Globes! An Ice Globe is just a frozen water balloon. After it’s frozen, you simply remove the balloon from the ice. Our teacher gave us 3 mystery ingredients and our choice of food coloring that we put on top of the Ice Globes. As the food coloring traveled through the cracks, it transformed into a colorful winter sensation. One of the mystery ingredients was a liquid, and two were powdery type substances. We also had a water bottle, a magnifying glass, a pin, a straw, a wooden popsicle stick and a thermometer.
We learned safety practices for the science lab and even got to wear our Mad Scientist Goggles. We also learned that wafting is safer than accidentally sniff, snuff, snortling a dangerous substance. We observed the reaction of the different substances to the ice. We found that one of them eroded and weathered away our Ice Globes. We poked and prodded, played and pondered as we jotted down our observations. Ice globes are really fun, and something you should try at home. We had an icy blast!

Cedar Breaks

Cedar Breaks

Have you ever been to Cedar Mountain? Well, guess what?! Our first field trip of the year, we got to go to Cedar Mountain. While we were there, we learned about how the earth’s surface changes. It was incredible! Here is what we learned:

First we went to Cedar Breaks. We met Ranger Daphne and Ranger Jason. They were the ones to show us around and tell us all about how Cedar Mountain was formed. They described it in a brief summary like a book in three chapters. Chapter One: Lake Bonneville and it’s Colorful Layers. The layers are formed by deposition. Deposition is when sand piles on top of each other and is smashed together. Chapter Two: Rock and Roll. That chapter was about how Cedar Mountain and Cedar City were just a flat place when it was Lake Bonneville. Then uplift occurred by faults and earthquakes because two plates collided! They pushed together and made Cedar Mountain. The mountain is 5,000 feet above Cedar City and 10,000 feet above sea level. Chapter Three: Slip Sliding Away. This is about erosion and weathering. Erosion is moving something away somewhere else and weathering is breaking down. If you have ever been to Cedar Breaks then you have seen erosion and weathering. There is a lot of hoodoos and rock walls. We even saw the Square Arch and one other arch. These were all pretty much made out of erosion and weathering.

When we got on the bus and got going, we started eating our lunch. Then, as we were eating our lunches, we passed by some lava beds. We could see from our windows that there was no plant life growing. It was only growing around the big, black, volcanic rock. They were like giant fields of rock. We had to write in our journals about them. On the way to Mammoth Cave every body was yelling, “WE ARE GOING TO DIE!” We were scared because there was a big cliff on the side! But of course, we didn’t drive off the cliff and die. Going up the mountain we got off the highway and got on to the dirt road. It was wet and there was a lot of mud puddles that made the bus dirty. Some of the kids were saying we just went mudding.

Wow! Mammoth Cave was gigantic! As we were in the cave it was wet and dark. “Flip!” We turned on our flashlights and began to investigate. When we started walking some of us ran into some rocks and we had to watch out where we stepped. As we looked around the perimeter, and when we stopped to rest, we noticed and pointed out that the cave had thick, hard ridges hanging down. So we had to watch out for our heads. Our teacher told us how the cave was formed and how the outside crust cooled first and then lava flowed through the inside and formed the cave. It was pitch black in there, and a little scary when we turned all of our flashlights off. As we got closer to the end of the cave, we could see light up ahead, and didn’t know what it was. As we came a little closer to the light and it got brighter, we noticed that we had to army crawl over some rocks. It was very difficult to do because the hole was crowded and very small for a body to fit in, but we all made it out of that tiny dark hole.

We had so much fun on our field trip. The three chapters that Ranger Daphne explained to us, helped us understand how the Mountain and Cedar Breaks were formed. Mammoth Cave was amazing. All of us had a great time learning and crawling through a stinky, muddy cave. We had so much fun on our field trip to Mammoth Cave and to Cedar Breaks!

Superintendent of the Year!

This is a summary of the article we read about Dr. Johnson:

Our school district’s superintendent, Dr. Jim Johnson, was elected by the Utah School Superintendents Association to be the superintendent of the year.  Before he was a superintendent for Iron County, he was a teacher, coach, principal and an assistant superintendent. We think it’s cool that he throws a a teacher appreciation and student achievement celebration.  We like that he was in the school services for that long of a time and we think he deserves to be Superintendent of the Year.

Remembering 9/11

The students recently learned how to use Google Presentations, thanks to Kelly Mulliner at SEDC. This is a great way to create and share presentations while working collaboratively. Mrs. Jones guided the class to create questions and discover the answers to create the following presentation Remembering 9/11.

Ten Year Anniversary of 9/11

How lucky I am to be teaching fifth graders US History on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  These kids were either just born or a year old when the attacks happened.  They have no recollection themselves of that day that we remember so well.  How can we forget?  And remember….“We will never forget….” became so commonly said, but still stirred our hearts because we knew.  We never would forget.  Well, these kids that were just beginning their lives when it happened, won’t remember unless we teach them.  Teach them what we thought, what we felt, and that we don’t want them to forget either.  I’m sure this day that changed history changed the course of these babies’ lives too.  Please share your comments here about how this day impacted you so we can teach them.

The Second Week of School?

It is so hard for me to believe that we have only been in school for two weeks!  These kids are full of so much energy and enthusiasm, they sure do keep me on my toes.  It seems as though there was no summer, and I’ve known these kids for months.  They are bright and fun and like to do new things.  Here is their summary of a few of the things we have been doing this week:

We have a new poll on our blog about the new lunch schedule. The way the poll works is you get to choose as many answers as you want. There is a place that you can post your comments on the poll.  We enjoy it so much when you comment and give advice.

In math we have been learning what mean, range, mode, and median are. The mean is also known as the average number. You add all the numbers together and divide by how many  numbers you added together and that is your average. The mode is the most popular number in all.

We have brand new emails we use for school assignments and our blog.  We love the google docs app.  You can type on it for every day use like Word.

We are going on a field trip to the lava caves on Cedar Mountain in a few weeks to learn about earth changes.

Take our lunch poll!