The Albertosaurus Mystery

This week's story is called The Albertosaurus Mystery: Philip Currie's Hunt in the Badlands.

If you have a spare hour, this video on the Badlands talks about why this area was so instrumental in preserving fossils.

If you don't have that long, check out the Badlands National Park website. 

It has some great Badlands videos to watch. Be sure to download the 3-5 Activity guide!

A great book to pair this with is The Night at the Museum by Milan Trenc.

Of course, you can also see the movie based on this book, A Night at the Museum.

Here's the trailer for the movie.

Want to know where you can see real dinosaur skeletons?

Visit the American Museum of Natural History in New York City! It has 2 permanent fossil halls on display. 

You can also participate in A Night at the Museum Sleepover! It's not cheap but it's a once in a lifetime experience kids will never forget!

Imagine sleeping under a whale!

The Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC has great dinosaur exhibits!

Go on a dinosaur dig in the Badlands!

....or in Middletown, New Jersey at Poricy Park!

Or if you don't live anywhere near these, click out this map! 

Check out my other dinosaur / fossil post "We Dig Dinosaurs" to see what I did with my science classes last year! It also lists sites where you can get more information and participate in virtual digs!

For other Journeys posts, click here.

Kinds of Clouds

We're learning about different kinds of clouds and how they can help meteorologists predict weather. We're going to make a "snow" mobile to help us understand what kind of clouds and where the clouds should be in the atmosphere in order for us to get snow. Until then, this should tide you over!

NASA Predicting Weather

Download this cloud type visual and question worksheet by clicking on the picture.

We used Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs as today's speculative writing prompt and read it afterwards.

Click the picture to download the Google Doc.

Check out the movie website to play games or watch the movie trailer.

You can also check out Babbling Abby's unit which also includes The Day It Rained Hearts, which is perfect for right around Valentine's Day!

Match cloud pictures to their names!

Play the Cloud Concentration game to match different cloud types!

Visit the Weather Wiz Kids website!

Check out the Enchanted Learning clouds page.

See resources for kids on the science page of my class website.

Happy Valentine's Day!

You might wonder what the heck I'm doing on the computer right now...well I'm at school. Still. Until 8:40 pm actually. And I got here at 7:30 this morning. Some genius decided to schedule parent teacher conferences on Valentine's Day! I had a break in between school and the start of conferences at 6:30,  topped off by a delish heart donut from Dunkin, so I'm all smiles now :)

I didn't even bother with anything unrelated to V-Day since we had a 1:30 dismissal (including a 30 minute special and 45 minute lunch / recess.) All they could think about was cupcakes and Valentine cards. They were all decked out!

Here's what I taught the kids did today.

We sorted candy hearts in several ways - in ABC order,

by color (and graphed them)...

compared them to see which colors had less and which had more...

and finally, we created dialogue out of them!

Would you believe those kids didn't eat them? After begging me to eat them all morning?!?! I swear, candy makes kids go crazy!

We did math word problems using this Promethean flipchart...

We made Valentines for a special someone and wrote a paragraph with three reasons why we loved them so Beary much! Of course I forgot to take a picture of their cute decorative writing paper and the writing that was stapled onto the back!

Then the fun began... I sugared them up with Hugs and Kisses, heart shaped marshmallows, and strawberry cupcakes. I really never do it, but today I went all out!

(Here's what the marshmallow package looks like in case you can't resist buying some!)

We also had some healthy red and purple fruits and veggies. Somehow orange objects found their way in!

red peppers, radishes, apples, and grapes

The kids sorted and graphed their Valentine cards...

because come on, they had to do something other than eat the candy, take the sticker, and throw them away!

I hope you enjoyed your Valentine's Day!

The Water Cycle

We started our "Earth in Space" science unit today after some flurrying over the weekend. It's been quite a dry winter with very little snow. In fact, the only snow that accumulated here was on Halloween! I am definitely not complaining, especially because we only have one snow day built into the calendar...but you know kids. They live for snow! Either way, here are some water cycle songs and videos they enjoy.

Scholastic Study Jams video

Check out the Quiz and Lesson Plan sections too!

The Water Cycle Song

Magic School Bus Wet All Over

Water Cycle Rap

Billy Nye The Science Guy "Water Cycle Jump"

Water Cycle Song by Science Explosion

http://havefunteaching.com/songs/science-songs/water-cycle-song/

We love multiplication and division!

We made some neat multiplication arrays using candy hearts. It took 2 eight ounce bags to make 22 of them. To make it fair, I pulled flashcards to tell each student what array to make. This can also be a great division activity if you tell them how many rows they need to divide their hearts into. They can easily find the remainder!

Just arrange them into arrays, glue, color, and write your number sentence!

We have also been using fact family triangles to make the connection to division. Students wrote the fact families from the front and back of their cards on dry erase boards, then switched with other classmates in their groups.

 

We also used various manipulatives and divided them into equal groups to solve word problems. Whatever was left over was our remainders. It was a great way to understand the vocabulary words divisible and remainder!