Fun Making Circuits and Finding Equivalent Fractions

We have been so busy in 4B lately.  I had the chance to take some pictures of some things we have been working on.

Yesterday and today we worked on finding equivalent fractions using fraction bars.  Then we looked for any patterns we could see with these fractions.

This afternoon students worked with a partner on learning how to build a circuit in science.  The students were each given two wires, a light bulb, and a battery.  It was pretty exciting as the groups would yell out when they figured out how to light the bulb.  Some groups had to work a little longer, but everyone completed the task.

Here is our first pair to figure out how to get a complete circuit.

Here are some more excited groups (I think I missed taking pictures of a few groups):

Here are some of the drawings done by students of how they made complete circuits.

Studying Minerals

Over the last two weeks the students have performed 5 different tests on a set of 10 "mystery minerals".  They took all the information they gathered from the tests to determine what was the name of each of the minerals they were given.  The students have realized it is hard work to be a geologist.  We will continue this week working on our geology unit by learning about the three types of rocks and learning about how they are each formed.

Here are some pictures of students doing some of the mineral tests:

Tracking Hurricanes

4B has started tracking the Atlantic hurricanes of 2013.  Students learned last week about longitude and latitude.  It has been a slow start for hurricanes this year, but we had our first tropical storm to track on Monday.  Each student has a tracking map and we will be looking at NOAA's website to get the coordinates of the storms locations each day.   I was excited today to hear the kids talking about how Tropical Storm Humberto had turned into a hurricane when they walked into class today.  I forgot to take pictures of the kids plotting the points, so I will have to get some later in the week.