Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween ~ 2011 on PhotoPeach

What was your favorite part of Halloween? 

What costume did you wear? 

What is your favorite kind of candy? Least favorite?

Skyping with Hawaii!

Mrs. Yollis loves Hawaii. In fact, last summer she visited the Aloha State and swam with many beautiful  tropical fish, watched green sea turtles, and viewed moray eels from a distance!

This week, Mrs. Yollis and her class got a chance to go to Hawaii again!  They Skyped with Mrs. Conley's class from the fiftieth state, Hawaii!

Many mainlanders dressed in their Hawaiian gear for the call! Aloha!

Before the call, Etai and Maya open the big blue atlas and found Hawaii for the class. Mrs. Yollis introduced the word archipelago to the class. An archipelago is a group of islands!

Many students had flown to Hawaii from California for a vacation. It is about a five hour flight. The class discussed the various islands.

Although Hawaii is an archipelago, the class Skyped with a class on Oahu. Oahu is home to the state capital, Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, and Diamond Head.

First, Mrs. Yollis' class shared their facts about California, their suburban community, and finally their school.

California has the highest population of all the 50 states.

Our community get about 14 inches of rain annually.

Lots of fun sharing the popular school games with our new Hawaiian friends.

Then it was time to learn about the Hawaiians!

They had a beautiful classroom!

Each student spoke clearly and had interesting information. For example, Oahu is known as the Gathering Place state.

Hawaii is three hours earlier than Los Angeles. It was 9:00 in Honolulu and 12:00 in Los Angeles!

Mia and Leila did a fantastic job taking notes of the Skype call. Here is their transcript!

We used some library books to learn more about the two states.

Even Beverly wore her special sarong for the event!

Thank you Brenden for being our photographer and Maya and Etai for being the class geographers.

What did you learn from the Skype call?

How are the two states alike?

How are they different?  

A Typical California School Day!

The first week of the global project called Our World, Our Stories has been magnificent! 

Watch our PhotoPeach of a 

Typical School Day in California

Head on over to the Our World, Our Stories blog and leave a comment or two!

Join the global conversation!

New Project: Our World, Our Stories!

Mrs. Yollis and her class are excited to be part of a new global project! 


Here is the blog!

Our World, Our Stories

Classes involved

The students are all from elementary school classes and are from three different continents and six different countries.

2KM and 2KJ from Victoria, Australia

B4 from New Zealand

Mrs Yollis’ third grade class from California, USA

Mr Salsich’s third grade class from Connecticut, USA

Mrs Watson’s 2/3 class from Canada

Andy Sefa Boachie and his students from Ghana

Miss Usher’s standard 3 class from Punta Gorda, Belize

How will it work? 

A different class will “lead” a topic on the blog each week. The lead class will publish posts and reply to comments.

Topics will be based on students’ interests such as school games, hobbies, food, and local environment.

The other classes will read the posts, possibly publish their own posts, and leave blog comments.

The students will be able learn a lot from getting to know how the other classes live their lives.

We plan to have a special celebration in December to finish our project!

If you want to keep up to date with how the fun and learning unfolds, there is a “subscribe via email” box on the right hand side of the Our World, Our Stories blog. It is right under the clock gadget and looks like this:

*     *     *     *     *

Do you know anything about Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ghana, or Belize?

What would you like to learn?  

Hip Hip Array!

We have been exploring arrays!

Row x Column = Product

The multiplication for the array above is

3 x 4 = 12

because it has 3 rows of 4.

When the factors are different digits, 
the arrays are in the shape of a rectangle. 
When the factors are the same digit, 
the array is a square!

Here is a quiz. 

Be sure your math sentence matches the picture!

Rows   x   Columns on PhotoPeach

Do you see any arrays at your house? Tell us about it!

Are You an Expert?

The second story in our Celebrating Traditions Unit is called

"Anthony Reynoso, Born to Rope."

 This is a story of a family's tradition of Mexican rodeo roping and riding. Anthony and his family work hard and practice their skills for their exhibitions. Because of their hours of practice, they are now expert performers!

*     *     *     *     * 

Please share about a skill you have worked hard to learn. 

What steps did you take to master this skill?  

Was it difficult at first?
 
Did anyone help you to achieve this goal?

Royce Skypes With Jarrod from Australia!

Guest Post by Royce

 On Sunday, I skyped with Jarrod from Australia! I was posting comments on Jarrod's blog about Poptropica. He thought I had interesting comments, so he had his parents email my parents and we set up a time to Skype and play Poptropica at the same time.

It was really fun when we were able to connect. At first, we both could see each other. Then Jarrod could not see me anymore, but I could see him the entire time! 

 In case you do not know what Poptropica is, head over to Jarrod’s awesome blog and look at his Poptropica post. Also look at his Skyping with Royce post. If you want to be friends over Poptropica, you can choose different rooms to be in. We chose three rooms: the enhanced forest, the crystal cavern, and the techno room. Every room had a code. I really liked playing Poptropica with Jarrod.

Jarrod and I understood each other's accents pretty well. It was only hard when we were telling each other the room codes. Have you ever had a hard time explaining something to your friends?   

 

I learned that Jarrod has a little brother who is three, he calls dinner tea time, and he wants to come to California and go to Disneyland and Universal Studios. We also learned that his mother lived in Nebraska for two years as an exchange student. She has visited California two times. 

This is what the home screen looks like on Poptropica.

You can visit a haunted house! Boo!

If you'd like, you can pick out a Halloween costume from the store.

Would you want to visit Mount Olympus?

Maybe you'd like to climb the rope! It will let you travel to another world!

I really enjoyed meeting Jarrod!

If you have never played Poptropica, do you ever plan to play?

Have you ever Skyped with a friend?

Have you ever spoken with a person who had an accent?

Skyping With Connecticut!

Today Mrs. Yollis' class traveled across the United States! They didn't really go from the west coast to the east coast, they met their Connecticut blogging buddies via Skype!

Sheriff Yollis and Sheriff Salsich also connect these greenhorns over at the Reading Round-Up! 

Parsa and Sasha were our geographers. Here is the great state of Connecticut. What do you noticed about the state? Who are their neighbors?  In our atlas, it says that Connecticut is in the New England region of the United States. What does that mean?

Sheriff Yollis and our greeter say a big howdy to the cowboys and cowgirls in Sheriff Salsich's class!

California is the THIRD largest state and has an AREA of 158,706 SQUARE MILES.

The beautiful state flower, the California poppy.

Our winter temperatures are pretty mild compared to Connecticut! Does anyone remember their annual rainfall? How much snow do they get yearly?

Here is Connecticut's state flower, the beautiful mountain laurel. This is a flowering shrub. Sometimes they grow together and form thickets! (What's a thicket?)

Favorite recess games were shared!

Mrs. Yollis' students enjoyed taking notes about their new Connecticut friends.

They got to meet Juan Pablo, the mascot of Mr. Salsich's class...

...they were also introduced to Perezoso, the sloth mascot!

Panda and Beverly were on hand for introductions. As usual, Panda was polite and had something useful to say. Panda said, "Actions speak louder than words."  So true, Panda!

 Beverly is still in hibernation!

Mia and Sarah have been busy with their AlphaSmart lessons and can already type! Because of their achievement, they were selected to take notes on TodaysMeet!

Here is their transcript!
(There are a few repeats because the girls were just learning how to use this new web tool.) 

Here are a few of the similarities and differences we noticed. We are trying to learn how to use our new MOBI!

Thank you, Leila, for being a fantastic photographer for the event!

Mr. Salsich published a post about the Skype connection on his class blog.

What did you learn about the state of Connecticut? Answer some of the question asked in this post!

Do you have any questions for the Nutmeggers? Please ask!

Welcome Back, Reading Round-Up!

This humdinger of a literacy blog is out on the learnin' trail again!

Mosey on over to learn all about  

nonfiction text features!

Click Here to hitch your wagon to the Reading Round-Up!

Bloggers Submit Word Problems!

 Last week, Mrs. Yollis class was working on a new type of word problem.  

Lots of practice was needed to master this new kind of problem. Here is the original math problem and video:

Panda and Hoppy left 25 comments. Hoppy left 5 more comments than Panda. 

How many comments did Panda leave? 

How many comments did Hoppy leave?

Because Mrs. Yollis' class needed lots of practice, they needed some math problems!

To make it more interesting, Mrs. Yollis published a challenge on Twitter for other class bloggers. She hoped to get some word problems from their blogging buddies. Students were encouraged to create word problems using their state symbols!

Behold!  Some

fabulous math problems!

                                                                                                   


California's Math Problems

Here are two of California's state symbols,

 the California quail and California's state tree, the coastal redwood. It is the tallest tree in the world! 

Here is a word problem using the California state bird and the state tree: 

The California quail was looking at two coastal redwoods. Their combined height was 480 feet. One tree was 20 feet taller than the other tree. How tall were the coastal redwoods?

                                                                                                

Look! Some
South Carolina Math Problems!

Here is one from Miss Tripp's class in South Carolina!

There are more to solve on their blog, The Garden of Learning! Check them out!

                                                                                                   

Marvelous!
Mississippi's Math Problems!

Here are some from the REACH Rocketeers in Mississippi! 

There are more to solve on their blog, Reach Rocketeers! Check them out! 

We also heard from Mr. Avery in Massachusetts, 

and Ms. Floyd in Texas!

Today we spent some time solving our friends' word problems. 

Take a look!

What do you think of classes making up the problems using their state symbols?

Please have your class contribute a problem here! It's a great mix of math and geography!

Skyping with New York!

Today, Mrs. Yollis Skyped with a class in New York. The New Yorkers were in the Eastern Standard Time (EST), and we were in the Pacific Standard time zone (PST).  In Los Angeles, it was 9:00 A.M. and it was noon in New York. 

Acacia and Royce were our geographers for the day. They had a tough time finding Brooklyn, New York, in the index at the back of our big, blue atlas! There were so many entries!

 We shared many symbols about our suburban community in California and learned all about New York!

Miss Bova and Miss Barbaro from an urban school in Brooklyn, New York.

Everyone had facts to share about California, the 31st state!

Eureka! I have found a lot of information!

We shared many facts about the Golden State! For example, the state tree is the California redwood.

Here is our greeter along with our first presenter. Do you know the capital of California?

Even though California isn't home to anymore grizzly bears, there is still one on the California flag!

We shared some school facts with the New Yorkers!

Mia wondered what kinds of books kids read in the Empire State. Many children read Diary of a Wimpy Kid! We love that book too!

Thanks, Parsa, for being our super photographer!

Many students took notes during the Skype call! Look at Logan's great information!

The Californians enjoyed their first Skype call! 

Here is a link to California's state symbols.  
Here is a link to New York's state symbols.   

What did you learn about New York?

What did you enjoy about the Skype call?

How did we adapt during the call?