Happy Chinese New Year!

Today, we had the opportunity to learn about the Chinese New Year, which started on Monday, January 23rd this year. It is the Year of the Dragon, so we made dragon puppets to use in a special dance. Catherine, Danny and Linni's mom, brought us some Chinese dumplings to try and we had a special lunch in our classroom. We even got to enjoy some fortune cookies as dessert!We learned that the Chinese New Year is a time of great happiness and celebration in China and Chinese communities around the U.S. There are parades, festivals, feasts, and gift-giving to welcome the new moon, in the hopes that luck and prosperity will abound in the new year! The kids had so much fun learning about another cultures' traditions and celebrations, and we even learned a couple of Chinese words!
Gung Hey Fat Choi!

Scientists at Work!

We arrived back from the holiday break ready to learn and explore! Our science unit focused on magnets and how they work. We spent time thinking like scientists and conducted a number of experiments to figure out what makes a magnet a magnet.

Exploring with magnets.

Completing the "Buried Treasure" activity. We used magnets to try to find marbles, nails, screws, rings, and keys hidden in the rice table.

Veronica explores how magnets attract and repel each other!

We did an experiment called "Paper Clip Attraction," where we used three different sized magnets and counted how many paper clips each one picked up. We recorded our observations in our science notebook and discovered that the bigger the magnet, the more paper clips that it could pick up.

We had so much fun exploring with magnets and using our scientific minds! Next up: a unit on the ocean as we prepare for our Flynn Theater field trip next week!