Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Bringing the Heat- Hallie Heat!


This week the boys and girls settled into class quickly and were ready to work hard!  We started our day by meeting our newest Quirkle, Hallie Heat.  From Hallie and her friends, we learned that dark colored clothing captures the sun's heat, while light colored clothing reflects the heat.  We also learned that heat rises and cold falls.  Ask your child to share his/her Quirkles science log, to tell you about his/her hypothesis and about our experiment shown below.

This week, we had our first Brown Bag Luncheon.  Our speaker, Sally Cook, is from the Children's Center for the Visually Inpaired, CCVI.  She share information on different types of visual impairments and allowed the students and parents to try on different goggles that simulated many of these impairments.  She also passed around children's books that were in Braille and ones with raised lines and textures.  At the end of our luncheon, Mrs. Cook used a Braille type writer and typed each child's name in Braille.  She was a very interesting speaker!


After lunch, we started our individual Exploratory tasks.  The newer students are on their knowledge level task (reading and watching a video) to learn more about their center topic.  The rest of the students continued working on their projects. Ask your child about his/her current center and task.

In the computer lab, the boys and girls continued to explore Microsoft Power Point.  They learned to insert a shape, resize it and move it around the slide.  The students also learned to format the shapes fill color.


Understanding the basic tools and functions of this program will transfer in the application of other Microsoft products and web based slide show applications.  Power Point is a good slide show program, but it is also great for digital story telling, book reports, posters, and even holiday cards.  Primary students soak up the functions with minimal instruction.  When my own children lost their "computer gaming privileges" for one offense or another, they would always say, "But can we still do Power Point?"


If you have Power Point available on a home computer, consider allowing your child to practice.

Another busy, but fun day!  Have a great week!


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