Dr. Seuss, LLI March Madness, Science Experiments, and an Easter Egg Hunt!

March was a busy month for the CLC Breakfast Club and for the other classes in the ELL program.  To celebrate one of my favorite months, we had an LLI March Madness tournament.  LLI is the reading intervention program that I use with my students to instruct them in reading and writing.  Each day my students had the opportunity to read a new book from the LLI system.  We created a tournament book bracket for each of the LLI groups.  Each day students had to decide between two different books and select which book was the favorite so that it could advance on to the next round of the tournament.  Students loved the LLI tournament!  They were excited to read the books and then make their selections.  Each time students were able to practice retelling the stories to remind their friends about the books.

We also celebrated Read Across America Week and Dr. Seuss's birthday.  We enjoyed some books written by Dr. Seuss, played some rhyming games, and even made a self-portraits and wrote about why we were special.

In March we also did some special science experiments.  We wanted to find out if certain objects would sink or float when placed in water.  We learned some pretty cool things.  Before we placed each item in the tub of water we recorded our predictions about each item as to whether or not we thought it would sink or float. 

Natanael gets ready to drop a crayon into the tub of water.

Anayeli is amazed to watch the clip sink to the bottom of the tub after Evelin dropped it in.

Anayeli gets ready to test another object.

One of our coolest objects to test was an orange.  Most of the students predicted that the orange would sink  so they were really surprised when it floated.

To make things even more interesting we then peeled the orange to see if it would make a difference.  The students were really excited to see that the peeled orange sunk to the bottom of the tub.  So why did this happen?  The orange peel is full of tiny pockets of air which gives the orange a lower density than water.  When the peel is gone the density of the orange is higher than the water, so it sinks.  Everyone loved doing the experiment and thinks science is fun!

Our last day of school in March was Thursday, March 28th.  The CLC Breakfast Club had a special Easter egg hunt in the classroom.  Students needed to find the hidden eggs and open each egg to reveal a tiny note with a unique letter and number on it.  Students then used the letters and numbers to help crack the code to an Easter message.

                           

Everyone jumped out of their chairs at the signal to start the egg hunt.

Anayeli was so excited to find an egg.

Keven and Evelin look carefully around the room.

Milo, Anayeli, and Natanael used the clues inside the eggs to add letters to the mystery message.

Milo found a blue egg.

Milo found one of the letters for the mystery message.

Natanel quickly cracked open an egg to reveal a new clue.

Evelin is excited to see what is inside the egg.

Evelyn and Brittany hunted around the room for eggs.

Brittany found an egg hiding by our dinosaur books.

Brittany and Evelyn cracked open the eggs so they could find another clue for the puzzle.

Evelyn found an egg hiding by the computer.

Evelin found a gigantic pink egg!