GRAHAM CRACKER COMMUNITY

 

 WELCOME TO FORT CAREY!

Where the air smells sweet...

         The homes are edible...

And the citizens who live there know what it means to have a good time!

 

Our summative assessment for our FORT planner (Families Organization Rules Togetherness) was to create our own community.  We created a graham cracker community that had the five areas most common in a community - rural, recreational, residential, commercial, and  industrial.

 

Fort Carey was designed according to the placement of the river.  We learned that communities are dependent upon a water source.  Fort Carey had all the amenities of a 'Choice City' - a hair salon, bakery, museum, zoo, mountains to hike & bike, police station, and shoe factory.

Many thanks to all the parent volunteers who came in to help with our graham cracker community - and a heartfelt thank you to everyone who donated the items we needed to create our masterpieces!

BUDDIES...We learn while we're having FUN!

 

We are fortunate to have 5th Grade Buddies.  We are paired with Mrs. Babcock's class.  We alternate classrooms to visit each week - and we get to do some great activities together!

Mrs. Babcock planned for us to learn about CHROMOTOGRAPHY.  We made these ultra-cool holiday lights out of coffee filters.

 

Mrs. Carey showed us how to make 3-D snowflakes using symmetrical cuts on a triangle.

FIELD TRIP TO THE AVERY HOUSE

Two years running, we've had a MAJOR snowstorm right before our field trip to the Avery House. Luckily for us, the temperatures were hovering just above 14 degrees when we left school - and we were blessed with a balmy 20 degree day. :)  Had it been any colder, we would have had to cancel. 

Our city's public bus system, TRANSFORT, is an incredible resource to our community.  We are fortunate that our school is minutes away from a bus stop.  Children under 17 ride free - so we use every opportunity we can to take field trips on Transfort!

 

This is one of those moments we'll be able to tell our grandchildren that we had to walk MILES (HA!) in deep snow and frigid temperatures to get to our field trip destination.

 

We toured the C&S Freight Depot.  C&S stood for 'Colorado & Southern'.  Mrs. Carey told us all about the depot and most importantly, she shared the story of Annie, the Railroad Dog.

 

We had two retired PSD teachers as our docents at the Avery House.  We learned all about Franklin Avery, his family, and the impact the Avery's had on Fort Collins as it was establishing itself as a community.  Our teachers wanted us to visit in December because the Avery House is decorated in traditional Victorian style - complete with a sugar plum tree!

POP QUIZ: 

Why are the streets so wide in Old Town?

How did Mr. Avery name the streets?

Where is the Avery House located?

What business did Mr. Avery start?

Mrs. Carey had a proud teacher moment on our way back to McGraw.  A bus rider AND the bus driver complimented our class (on separate occasions) for being respectful and quiet on the bus. :)

TETRAHEDRON KITES

ENGAGING in an activity is far better than passively learning a new concept.  Here we are making our tetrahedron kites in conjunction with our unit on 2-D & 3-D shapes.  Our focus was not only understanding the differences between 2-D and 3-D - but to focus in on the academic vocabulary of Geometry.  Our tetrahedron kites provided us ample opportunity to acquire new vocabulary words and APPLY them to our learning.

Here we are blowing the wrapper off of our straws. 

We were allowed to do this ONE TIME - just to get it out of our systems.

A sample of vocabulary we used to create our tetrahedrons:

• line segments
• polygons
• non-polygon
• 2-dimensional
• plane figure
• equilateral triangle
• rhombus
• 3-dimensional
• space figure
• polyhedron
• tetrahedron
• acute angle
• obtuse angle
• right angle
• vertex
• vertice
• sides/faces/planes
• triangular prism 

We started with a simple line segment.

 

The frame of our tetrahedron!

 

Tissue paper represented the faces/planes of our 3-D models.

 

Each friend made 4 individual tetrahedrons. 

We decided to connect our individual kites together to make a larger tetrahedron.

Mrs. Carey challenged us to 'do the math' to determine how many tetrahedrons we would need to create a monster class tetrahedron kite.  We figured it out - and hung it up in our classroom.

MCGRAW ACTION

Oops!  I forgot to post this back in December!

Three of our classmates were featured on the McGraw News Show.  They talked about our class action project to write letters to Santa to support the Macy's 'I Believe' campaign to donate $1 per letter up to $1 million to the "Make A Wish" Foundation.

They also talked about our participation counting Morning Fresh Dairy milk caps for the McGraw PTSO.

KIDS SAY THE FUNNIEST THINGS...

I was preparing a lesson about health & exercise for our class - and testing out the "12 Days of Fitness" on the kids I carpool with. I started to sing, "On the 1st day of fitness, my trainer said to me..."

And the kindergarten boy chimes in, "Ten smokers smoking..." I had to laugh.

We played 'JeopEARTHY' today!

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science came to McGraw today for an assembly. Game show presenter Lynn told all the children they would win a prize - and the prize was KNOWLEDGE. We learned about the systems of the earth, played 'Energy Plinko', and got to watch our friends participate in some FUNNY skits.

What you didn't know is that we have our own WATER MOLECULE dancer in class. He's got quite the moves, don't you think?