100 days of Fun and Kansas Day!

This week was packed with activities! Here is a look at what happened this week.

On Tuesday we celebrated our 100th day of school. One student drew 100 hopscotch spaces!

The student in the blue shirt is at the end of the 100 hopscotch.

Some students took 100 steps and marked it off!

Since everyone's feet are slightly different sizes, we all ended up at different places. 

It was a beautiful day in Kansas on Tuesday!! We also talked about what we would buy if we had $100!

We played a math game counting by multiples to 100. It was amazing to watch some of my younger students really stick it out with the older students.

One of our paras was leaving for Hawaii on Wednesday, so we put 100 sticky notes on her car and as many streamers as we could possibly tie on. I sure hope she is having fun! Her husband won the trip through his work and there are no more deserving people than them! It was a lot of fun to put all those sticky notes on the car.

And here is my favorite.... after we went and got her and she saw the car.....

I hope you are having a great trip Ms. Beanie!

In the afternoon we researched and wrote about what we would buy if we had $100. It had to be something you could actually buy for $100. The first thing one student said when I said what would you buy if you had $100 was "... a new gaming system!" which led to varied cries about ps3's and so on and so I said that they had to do the research and if they wrote about it, they had to prove that they could actually buy it for $100 or less. What a creative bunch of students! They searched ebay and amazon and found the electronics they hoped for! One student, however, said that she would use it to buy groceries for her family. So sweet!

Next we made our "100 pieces" snack. We counted 10 pieces of 10 different items in order to have a snack of 100 items! We enjoyed our snack while we listened to our classmates read about what they would buy with $100.

Students wanted to do an "at home" project with one hundred objects and so I gave them that option. Because our school is in a small town (and no local grocery store), I did not assign it as homework. One little learner wore a 100 day shirt that she made with her Mom!

There are 100 stars on this girl's shirt! 

We had another "big day" this week~ Kansas Day!
The older class had a Living Wax Museum (they were simply awesome)! And we supported them by visiting and going around to the stations and pressing the buttons.

Amelia Earhart (left) and Carrie Nation (right)

Did you know.... Omar Knedlik invented the Icee? Those magical drinks you get at Kwik Shop?

Frank Carney explains about the founding of Pizza Hut and joining the Papa Johns team later.

Ronald Evans ready for take off! 

Buffalo Bill Cody

How did we celebrate? We worked on the following:

Kinder and First learned about the state symbols, made a booklet with pages they colored and made a wild native sunflower, which is our state flower. Their sunflowers look so bright and cheery on our door! There is one flower posted on the other side of our door as well.

Third and Fourth grade researched a famous Kansan. Here are just a few photos of students giving their presentations. We contained this to Thursday and Friday. These little learners are learning so much about time management and focusing on their research.  This Spring we will really focus on citing our works and NOT using other people's words. Students were required to find out when and where their famous person was born, when they died, why they were famous and how this made our lives better.

This young man learned Walter Chrysler. I apologize for not getting the video started immediately, I am learning my way around a new phone.

This young man learned about Susanna Salter, the first woman mayor elect in the United States! 

We re-created the Kansas State Capitol Dome! This was a fast and furious, fun and creative project. We scavenged the school for acceptable materials and modeled our domes after an image I printed from The Kansas State Historical Site, you can see it here. Second Grade made this image below using two liter bottles, paper, soup containers and a rod they found, adding windows of cardboard. They chose not to paint it to make it look more authentic and present it like this. Their creativity was amazing.

Second grade is presenting and explaining their process and telling how they made their dome. 

Fourth grade showed the most team effort and the best teamwork I have seen from this bunch so far this year. Everyone in their group had the opportunity to share ideas and add to their dome. I had to give them an award! 

Here is their dome, which they assembled in about twenty minutes.
They even found a figurine to put on top that is shooting toward the stars! 

It was a wonderfully action packed week! This is only a glimpse of all we did and I am exhausted just typing it up! Next week we start learning about different cultures and preparing for our multicultural night on the 19th.