Day 124, Kaleigh and Carson-1st Grade Students

Oscar Celebration

Today we celebrated our non-fiction reading and writing units with Mrs. Clark’s and Mrs. McCarthy’s classes. In class, we have been writing non-fiction, or teaching, books and we have also been reading a lot of non-fiction books too. We have even had book clubs with non-fiction books. Since our unit was finished, today we had a big celebration.

At the celebration we got to strut our stuff on the red carpet and even strike a pose with our new trophy. Our teachers took pictures of us as we posed. The trophy said “2014 Best Non-Fiction Author” on it. Everyone in the audience clapped and cheered for us. Mrs. Bell even came to watch and congratulate us too. She walked the red carpet and did a funny pose too.

At the end of the celebration we got to get with a partner from the other class and read our non-fiction stories to each other. After that we shared questions and gave a compliment about the story. We liked encouraging each others writing.

This celebration was a blast! It was a fun way to show our reading and writing and how hard we have been working in class. Now we will always have our trophy to remind us what great authors we are.

Day 117, Gracie-1st Grade Student

Dental Health VisitDr. Bright

Today, we had a visit from Dr. Bright. He is an orthodontist, which is a special kind of dentist. He taught us how to take care of our teeth and some interesting facts.

· Everyone has 2 sets of teeth. By the time you are 14-18 you get rid of all of your baby teeth and get your permanent teeth.

· You need calcium to keep your teeth strong and healthy. You can find calcium in milk and ice cream.

· A toothbrush is called a tooth brush, not a teeth brush, because you are supposed to concentrate on one tooth at a time. The best way to do this is to brush 6 circles on each tooth and then rinse with water at the end. After that you should floss your teeth with dental floss. The whole process should take about 2-3 minutes.

· You should brush your teeth 2 times each day. The best times are when you wake up and when you go to bed. You want to sleep with a clean mouth.

· If you do not take care of your teeth you will get cavities from the acid that plaque gives off. This causes a hole in your tooth and you have to go to the dentist to get it fixed.

· Your molars grind up food for you, so that you are able to swallow it.

· An orthodontist puts braces on your teeth, but only if you actually need them. You can get them when all of your baby teeth fall out.

I liked the visit from Dr. Bright. He taught us a lot about taking care of our teeth. I love taking care of my teeth, going to the dentist and getting good check-ups.

Day 107, Aidan-1st Grade Student

Weather Chat with 1st Grade

Anthony Yanez - Channel 2 Meteorologist

By: Aidan Plut

Anthony Yanez from channel 2 came to our school to teach us about weather. He taught us about the Water Cycle. A fun fact he shared is that we drink the same water that the dinosaurs drank. He also taught us about all kinds of clouds. The clouds can tell us what kind of weather is coming. When we get a storm that could bring lots of rain, that means we could get a flood. Mr. Yanez taught us rules that we need to follow during a flood.

· Never bike through high water.

· Do not play in flood water.

· Don’t drive in water if you don’t know how deep it is.

Do you know what do you do if you are outside and your hair stands up? If you are outside and your hair starts to stand up on your head or your arms that means that lightning has chosen you as a target and you should duck down as low as you can to the ground. Also, don’t play on metal toys at the playground during a storm.

Hurricanes can cause floods and high waters. They can also cause tornadoes. You should go to a safe place like a closet or a room with no windows. If you know a hurricane is coming you could try to go to a different city where they aren’t going to get the hurricane.

I enjoyed being your reporter for this activity. I am glad that Mr. Yanez came to our school to teach us about weather. I learned many facts and he made it a lot of fun.

Day 106, Trevor B.-4th Grade Student

International Random Acts of Kindness Week

This week is International Random Act of Kindness Week - February 10th - 14th. It is true; you can google it!  I am a fourth grader at Cimarron Elementary in Mr. Baker’s class (shout out to Mr. Baker and my classmates – you rock!!!).  I am trying to raise awareness about Random Act of Kindness (RAK) week.  What’s that you ask?  Random Acts of Kindness are just that; ways we can be kind to each other and make the world a better place!

Some examples are:

Picking up trash, holding the door open for someone, and helping your teacher with the chairs. I have an idea for each day this week at Cimarron.  We will be showing appreciation to our teachers, parents, bus drivers, and custodians.  All of our bus riders will write notes to give to our bus drivers in the afternoon.  Our students will write thank you notes to custodians so we can make a display wall for our great custodial staff. 

Monday’s idea is simple.  I hope everyone participates and keeps doing it every day.  I challenge everyone to say “Hello” and “Have a good day” with a big smile to three people you don’t know. 

Let me start us off by saying to all of our CE blog readers “HAVE A GREAT DAY!!!”

Sincerely,

Trevor Black (Your Local RAK Consultant)

P.S.  Remember smiles are contagious; pass them on!!

Day 99, Tami Boltz-Music Teacher

Rhythm Path Drumming Campus Visit

David Cox of Rhythm Path Drumming visited Cimarron today to conduct “A Day of Drumming” with each of the classes. David lives in Wichita Falls, Texas and is a professional educator and percussionist.His travels and studies have taken him to West Africa, where he perfected his drumming techniques, using the most common drum found in West Africa, the djembe.

Drumming circles are part of the everyday culture in countries like Senegal, Gambia, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Guinea-Bissau. Each student was able to play the djembe drum with their entire grade level and learn about the cultures, languages and customs in the West African countries. It was a LOUD but exciting day!

Day 82-Amanda Fait, Kindergarten

20 Things We Should Say More Often-Simple Advice from Wise Kindergarten Students

Kid President inspired our Kindergarten class with his video, 20 Things We Should Say More Often. Our class loved his simple advice and thought some of his suggestions were quite hilarious. We decided to make our own video about things we should DO more often. Each student came up with their own idea of something people should do more often. They then wrote it on a piece of construction paper, illustrated it and then shared their thoughts in our video. Check out our video.

Day 79, Lauren Blum, 4th Grade Science

Student Created Labs

Recently, strange things have been happening in 4^th grade. The students have taken over and created their own science labs!! Classmates joined forces to come up with their best lab demonstration to show weathering, erosion, and/or deposition. Each group went “shopping” for materials in the science lab, set up the lab, and presented it to the class.

Cotton balls represent rocks that get washed downstream by a river and eventually end up in a new location.

Here is what two students had to say about the lab:

Our wreathing, erosion, and deposition lab gave us the ability to come up with a lab by ourselves. Instead of us following someone else’s steps, we got to create our own steps! It was really fun and I hope we could do something like it again! It was challenging, but that’s what made it fun! See, what we did was, we got to come up with a way to show weathering, erosion, or deposition. Then we got to show it to the whole class! It was like an exciting way of learning about science! –Taylor

My group made our science demonstration for erosion and deposition. We compiled our ideas. One person’s idea was to have a paper towel tube with sand in it and pour water into it which would demonstrate erosion because as our teacher taught, erosion is when something like sand is picked up and moved to a new location. I thought that if we added a tank and some spoons that we could show deposition. So we stacked some books on top of each other and we did use a paper towel tube with sand in it. Then we poured water into it and left some behind. After that we had the tube leading to a big bucket with water in it. We also put rocks in it because we knew that when rock hits water it releases some sad. When the sand floated to the bottom we knew we managed to show erosion and deposition. – Zyonne

A beach of sand and rock that was eroded away by the waves (bucket being shaken back and forth).