Another week of Enrichment

There are so many WONDERFUL and ENGAGING activities going on at Laurel Mountain.  It is hard to write about them all, but here are some more examples of the different enrichment opportunities that are taking place every day in the classroom.


Mrs. Sen’s 1^st grade class: Because we are the skylarks, today we made birdhouses. It was fun to get experience with wood and tempura paint. The best part for me was watching the kids figure out how to fit the wood pieces together, and then help others who were still working on theirs. Most of the kids said their favorite part was painting the birdhouses. We had a great time.


Mrs. Myrick’s 5^th grade class: Mrs. Myrick's Mustangs spent our E-slot time forming our class expectations. We are forming guidelines that we want to agree on to form a classroom that we feel happy to be a part of. The Mustangs wrote and put on skits showing what makes a good classroom ... and what doesn't! I told them I wanted them to relay the information any way they wanted. Skits were the big choice.


Mr. Hance’s 4^th grade class: Our E-slot was in line with the class Mission Statement.  As we were coming up with the statement, several of the students talked about issues pertaining to philanthropy, good stewardship, citizenry, etc. and this is what we came up with: Our dedication, commitment and resolve is to achieve our best scores, make good choices, become better students, increase our preparedness, and prove to be a benefit to ourselves, each other, and the world around us.


I made arrangements with Ms. Alba to have the students do a "litter sweep" of the perimeter of the school and pick up all the trash they could find. We wound up with about two good sized bags full of trash. We returned to class and then had them write about the experience with the following prompt: Earlier this year, Mr. Hance’s 4^th grade class created our mission statement.  As part of that mission statement, we committed to "proving ourselves a benefit to ourselves and the world around us."  Today, we took a step towards fulfilling that part of our mission.  In other words, we made a promise to make things better.  What did we do to make things better?  What does that mean?  What does that mean to you?


I'm still reviewing what they wrote, but from what I can tell, I have some good responses, including awareness of the challenges of Ms. Alba’s job, how much litter can accumulate by even the smallest pieces of scrap, appreciation for making their environment (micro and macro) "better" by their activity in the morning.

Ms. Fredrickson’s 3^rd grade class: We made boats out of cardboard from cereal boxes and Styrofoam cups. The students decorate their boat, and then I punched a hole in the back of it. Students tested out their boats in a tub of water and observed what occurred. They recorded their observations and the procedures in their science journals. Then we placed their boats back into the water and I dropped some liquid dish soap into the hole in the back of the boat. The soap mixing with the water disrupted the surface tension, which caused the boat to move forward through the water. We discovered that the cardboard boats moved more successfully than the Styrofoam ones.

Mrs. Miranda’s kindergarten class: For our E-slot, we used Play-doh for our first science experiment.  Everyone got three balls of red, yellow and blue Play-doh.  It was very cool to mix the primary colors to make secondary colors!  We found out that when scientists do experiments they make drawings and write about what they observe.  We got our brand-new Science Journals and made a title page and then recorded our observations about the color-mixing.

Mrs. Peacock’s kindergarten class: My kids are interested in science. So, I did a fun lesson on surface tension.

• We made little paper boats out of index cards.
• We placed the index cards in pans of water.
• We dropped a drop of dish soap (via an eyedropper) behind the index card and voila...the boat went!
• The kids were amazed.
• We repeated the experiment and the students couldn't figure out why they couldn't get their boats to go a second time.
• A few of the kids suggested that it was because there was already soap in the water.
• So, we repeated the experiment with clean water and our boats went again!
• Then, we brainstormed all of the reasons why the soap had an effect on our boats and why we couldn't repeat the experiment!

Mrs. Donna Lee’s kindergarten class: In our Lovebug class, theatre arts and cooking are two favorites on our Interest Surveys.  So, this week, we made puppets to act out a childhood favorite story, The Gingerbread Man.  On Friday during our E-slot time, we made a huge gingerbread man from a cake mix.  He was so big, we had to bake him in the cafeteria oven.  After the anticipation of going to get him and hoping he was still in the oven, we discovered he was gone!  He left us clues all over the building for us to hunt for him.  After several stops, the last clue has us going back to our classroom where we found him on our table!  He didn't last long, because we acted out the last part of the story and gobbled him ALL up!    Along with such a fun enrichment experience, we were also able to cover our kindergarten TEKS of learning more about different locations in our school.

Mrs. Neely's 1st grade class: We used problem solving and creative thinking to design and produce individual gnome characters for our bulletin board. We brainstormed a list of things we are interested in and activities we enjoy. We learned new paper crafting techniques and applied them to our characters. The students are very proud of the gnomes they created and excited for the whole school to see them displayed outside of our classroom.

Continuing to develop the whole child.....