Powsner's Place

Today is a sad day…… do you know why? It’s a sad day because our friend Adell is moving!!! She is moving half way arouond the world to Saudi Arabia. We wish her the best of luck! Keep in touch Adell!

This week in Four Winds we learned about pinecones. We looked at different pinecones and observed that when the petals are closed it keeps the seeds in and the tree can’t reproduce. When the petals are open they let seeds go and the tree can reproduce. We had a lot of fun. We finished up the hour decorating our pinecones and here are some of the creations we made.

blog submitted by Ali

This week was Super Duper Amazing. This week in science, we learned about cells. We did an experiment with an egg, (aka the visible cell). This experiment was to test osmosis.  This is the experiment:

We put the egg in vinegar overnight.

Outcome using vinegar:  NO SHELL    It leaves the membrane showing

The next day we wanted to see what would happen if we added salt, food coloring or sugar.

Outcome using corn syrup:  WRINKLED MESS   Also slight color change

Outcome using salt water:  EGG APPEARED TO GET BIGGER AND STRONGER

     That is what happened.  It was fun and messy too!

blog written and posted by Jack and Anna

This week was great; we had our second Four Winds unit. We studied leaves. We learned the names of the different parts of the leaves like the stem, teeth, lobes, and veins. One cool fact is that in the summer the leaves have a lot of chlorophyll, which makes them green. But, as the days grow shorter and the weather gets colder chlorophyll is not able to run through the veins. That’s why leaves are brown, yellow, orange, or red in autumn. Also in Four Winds we did a leaf drawing where you stand back to back with a partner. One partner describes the leaf while the other one draws it. It was really fun!  When we finished our drawing activity we went outside for a leaf scavenger hunt. We searched for eight different kinds of leafs, and found just about all of them. Thank you to Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Moore for teaching us Four Winds!

Submitted by: Julia, Becca and Ali

 The week was great!  The big news flash was cells. We have been learning about them in science and they are very interesting.  We began the week making slides of onion cells. We put a thin piece of onion on a slide.  Since the onion is white and blends in with the light, we put two drops of red food coloring on the onion.  We covered it with another slide and placed it under the microscope.  What we saw was amazing.  They looked like little prison cells. Ironically, that’s how they got their name.  We also made a game up with our vocabulary words.  We made flashcards and had fun learning the definitions.  We love to say endoplasmic reticulum because it rolls off your tongue and makes you sound smart.  We had a great week in science.

Blog submitted by Olivia, Kelsey, Kaitlyn and Julia

Posted by Ali and Ruby

These are the pictures of our field trip to Indian Brook.  The trip was a lot of fun.  We hiked on a trail around the resevoir and than played some games.  Everyone had a good time.

blog sumitted by:  Kyle Mendes

We took NECAPS this week!  They were challenging, but fun.  It was fun because we had no homework!

We celebrated our hard work this morning.  Jack’s mom brought in apple crisp.  It was warm and crispy with whipped cream on top.  Mmmm, thank you Mrs. Moore. 

blog submitted by Van, Alex and Olivia

This month, we had our first 4 Winds lesson and it was on insects!  Did you know that there are 200 million insects for every person in the world?  Kind of freaky when you think about it!  We learned that all insects have 3 body parts. These body parts are the head, thorax and abdomen.  Did you know that insects all have 6 legs and 2 antennas?  Many people think that a spider in an insect, but it isn’t because it has eight legs and two body parts.   We also found out that all true bugs have wings that make the letter X when they rest their wings across their back.  One interesting fact is that insects all have compound eyes.  A compound eye enables an insect to see all around its body without it even having to turn its head!  That’s why when you try to swat a fly; it knows that you are there. Now that is pretty cool.  We had a lot of fun in 4 Winds.

Blog submitted by: Julia, Anna and Kyle and edited by the class

Blog posted by: Ruby and Ali

We had fun in math today.  We recorded our reaction time by doing a Grab-It experiment. Working in pairs, we took the Grab-It gauge, held it up, and dropped it.  Our partner would try to catch it.  We recorded the number of seconds it took for their fingers to land on the gauge.  Then we recorded the times in our math books. We had to use both our left and right hands.  Once we had our reaction times recorded, we were asked to find the minimum, maximum, mode and the mean (which is the average).  It’s a fun way to do math, and test your reactions. Think fast!

Blog submitted by: Julia, Kaitlyn and Dino.   

Blog posted by: Ruby and Kaitlyn              

This week we celebrated Constitution Day in school.  The constitution is a set of laws that we follow.  Together we wrote a classroom constitution…

We the students of room 185 in order to form a more orderly and comfortable classroom pledge to the following rules.

• Be respectful, and kind
• Raise our hands, and take turns talking
• Respect classmates and teachers
• Be patient
• Use classroom materials properly
• Give your best
• Work hard
• Help each other
• Not talk out
• Quiet during reading
• Do our homework and be as organized as possible

Blog Submitted by: Vincent, AJ, Ali, Kelsey, Olivia

Posted by: Ruby