Pajama Day!

Friday was a special day at school for two reasons.  It was pajama day and we celebrated Yusi's 10th birthday by having a girl's lunch together.  All of the girls from The Luther Scoop got together to eat lunch, talk, and have fun.

Later that afternoon some of the reporters were busy typing their February stories in the computer lab.  We decided to make our February issue all about Valentine's Day.  Our plan is to sell the newspapers the week of Valentine's Day and have a contest for one lucky winner to win a special Valentine's surprise.

Be sure to check out Moises's fancy Green Bay Packer slippers.

Picture It Project

The CLC Breakfast Club has been busy participating in another pen pal project.  This project is entitled "Picture It" and involves collaborating with 23 other schools to create a giant mural inspired by Monet's Water Lilies painting.  Our wonderful IMC director, Ms. Maniaci, helped us find out about this cool project from the website http://projectsbyjen.com/.  Before Christmas we participated in a holiday greeting card pen pal exchange through the same website.

Javian, Hector, and Jasmin are working hard on coloring their squares.

Jasmin and Moises both had great ideas of how to make their squares unique.

Our Breakfast Club has a lot of fun together!

For the Picture It project, we were assigned square #12 in the mural.  Each of our pen pals was assigned a different square.  It was our job to use crayons to creatively color our square.  The students in the CLC Breakfast Club colored twenty-three of the same squares.  Our favorite coloring technique was using another color to outline the images in our square to make them pop off the page.  We are busy getting the squares ready to send to each of our pen pals.  We have prepared a letter to include with our square telling some things about ourselves and about our school.  We have different pen pals from all over the United States.  Some of the states that we have pen pals from are: Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virgina, Oklahoma, New Jersey, New York, Washington, North Carolina, West Virginia, Minnesota, South Carolina, and even another school in Wisconsin.

Here was a silly picture we took together after creating our squares. 

We are excited for our pen pals to receive our square to help complete their mural.  We are EVEN MORE EXCITED to receive the squares from our pen pals so we can see the finished project.

Soap Explosion!

Last week we had a school assembly about science experiments and chemical reactions.

Some Luther students demonstrated how bonds and atoms created a molecule.

Students were able to watch a chemical reaction in action.

Keven was chosen to participate in one of the experiments.  We observed what happened when Keven used chap stick to draw on a piece of goldenrod paper and then sprayed it with Windex.

After attending the science assembly the students in the CLC Breakfast Club were inspired to become scientists.  In our class we did an experiment that involved a physical change.  Students were first introduced to the materials: Ivory soap, a paper plate, and a microwave.

Next, students used their science journals to record some predictions of what they thought would happen when we put a 1/4 of the bar of soap into the microwave for one minute.

Each student had a unique prediction that had them connecting information to their background knowledge. Moises and Javian both thought the soap would melt. Javian knew that the microwave makes things hot and made a connection to the hot chocolate he made the night before at his house. Moises remembered what he had learned about states of matter and how when the temperature increases, solids can turn into liquids. 

Hector was hoping for an explosion and a big "BOOM" in the microwave.

Here is what happened during our experiment:

After the experiment we wrote down our observations and concluded what happened.  The soap underwent a physical change.  It was still soap, even though it looked different.  Jasmin thought the new soap looked like a cloud and Hector thought the new soap looked like fluffy popcorn.  Nathan thought the soap now felt like paper.

We learned that the Ivory soap had air bubbles in it, and when the soap was heated, the soap expanded.

Each student was able to take a bag home of the new foamy soap.

We are excited for our next experiment!