Weather Field Trip & Responsibility!

Since I blogged last we have finished up our weather unit and we took our weather field trip, which was AMAZING!  We went to visit the meteorology dept at a local university.  They split the children into two groups and gave us a tour.  We went on the roof of the building and saw old and new weather equipment as well as some experiments students were currently working on.  The children liked being on the roof because they could see into the football stadium from the building we were standing on so that was pretty neat.  The second part of our tour took us into the National Weather Service office located at the university.  We saw the computers they use for forecasting and then we were able to see the actual weather balloon they were going to launch that evening.  It was pretty amazing to me to see that the balloon was located on the third floor, but the helium is piped up from the basement.  There is a door in the ceiling that opens up and the balloon is launched out the roof.  It takes two hours for the balloon to get enough altitude to pop (which is pretty much outer space when that happens).  When the balloon pops, they then have to go track down the "package" attached to the bottom that gives them all their data.  The last part of our tour was probably the children's favorite part.  We went into the weathercasting studio and they stood in front of the green screen pretending they were meteorologists.  We finished up the field trip with some demonstrations of air pressure.  Overall, I think the professor that set all this up for us is pretty amazing.  He as well as the other professors that helped with the tour, did this out of the goodness of their heart!  I can't wait to go back again next year!

weather balloon

green screen!

Our language arts unit that we just started is focused on responsibility.  I created a fun bulletin board using crayons as the theme to display responsibility.  The focus is being responsible to myself, at school, to my friends, my family, and the environment.  As a homework assignment last week, I had the kids bring in a news/magazine article about someone being responsible.  We decided who they were being responsible to and hung the picture from their story on the bulletin board under the appropriate category.  A while back, I had some grandparents ask if they could come in and do a sock monkey activity in the classroom, since they knew my theme was monkey.  I was also given a sock monkey book to read to the kids along with a sock monkey stuffed animal.  The book is called Sock Monkey goes to Hollywood: A star is bathed.  It fit with our responsibility unit by teaching the children that keeping themselves clean is part of being responsible to yourself.  So, we read that story and then the grandparents came in and led the class in an activity of making sock monkeys on paper.  It was really fun to see their creativity and I'm excited to hang them up!

close up of the board

whole bulletin board

working on their sock monkeys

trying to figure out how to make that paper into a shirt

 Well, fall carnival is next week and our booth is going to be an alphabet duck pond! Stay tuned for pics!