Columbia River Gorge

Lose yourself in nature and find peace...

The final five weeks of our time together will be doing just that! We will be exploring the beauty of the Gorge. Comparing how it changes from fall to spring, looking at the beauty of the wildflowers that grow, helping to paint a mural in the grade school, and doing our part to help it remain the amazing place that it is.

To begin our classroom has been asked to paint important places and things found in the Gorge from Wahkeena Falls to Cascade Locks. From the historic stonework to the many falls and parks, our paintings have been done with lots of thought and care.

On May 10th and 11th we will be traveling up the Gorge to revisit Rowena Plateau and Larch Mountain to experience the changes that have taking place. We will also have the opportunity to see the beautiful wildflowers that are so abundant.

We recently joined with all of the members of the intermediate pod to help in the fight against garlic mustard. This very invasive plant is endangering many areas in the western part of the Gorge. Together we were able to pull over 80 bags of this plant near Guy Talbot State Park.

Mixtures and Solutions

Our new science exploration has our classroom busy with mixtures and solutions. Last week we learned the difference between a mixture and solution and how to separate them. Mixtures could be separated using screens and filters, but solutions required a bit more time. We quickly learned that evaporation was the way to find salt that was in our solution of salt and water. We loved looking closely at the result. We discovered that the salt was now small square crystals that all had little "x"s on them. We learned that salt's scientific name is sodium chloride.

This week we used what we learned about mixtures and solutions and how to separate them with screens, filters, and evaporation. We worked in teams that had to design a way to separate a dry mixture of gravel, salt, and a powder. Each team came up with a unique was to solve the problem. We learned that there can be more than one way to complete this, but some might work a bit better than others!

Revolution Wrap up

We are wrapping up our studies of the Revolutionary War. We have read about the events and researched important people. We learned how to sew like the colonists and made a pillow of our own. We listened to a historical fictional story and discussed how hard it would have been to have a dad on one side and our brother on the other. To finish up we are writing a story of our own. We will complete our stories when we return from spring break.

Enjoy the break because our spring will be a filled with learning more about the U.S. Constitution and exploring the three branches of our government. Each student will also be assigned a U.S. state to study and make a presentation on. During April we will also be creating the hallway mural of the Columbia River Gorge, investigating chemicals and solutions in science, and writing poetry.

Take care!

Area of Study Celebration - Round 2

Today was such an amazing experience watching and listening to all of the conversations! The celebration was a wonderful way of wrapping up a lot of hard work by many.

Valentine's Celebration

World Forestry Center

We had a great time exploring at the World Forestry Center on Friday, January 22nd. After reading about the four types of forests, who lives in forests, and how we can preserve our forests, we then became fire jumpers, white water rafters, explorers of the forest canopy, and we even planted a few trees. Thanks to our wonderful parent chaperones. We also received a compliment from other visitors that happened to be there. They were very impressed with the kids from Corbett and how well mannered and hard working they were!

Glad to be Back!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful break. I know that I did! It was nice to see all of my family, eat a lot of great food, watch some movies, and relax with a good book or two.

I must admit that I missed seeing the kids of Room 12 and I am excited to get back. We were very busy today calculating some math, reading, writing, and beginning our new studies on the 13 colonies.

We started our studies on the 13 colonies with a bit of historical background. We are reading a book from Joy Hakim and she introduces the colonies with a trip back a few thousand years. She tells the story about how in the city of Ur there lived a boy named Abraham. We now know Ur as Iraq. She goes on to tell of Abraham's travels. She tells of what Israel, Egypt, Canaan, Greece was like thousands of years ago. Her story also tells of the Romans and what life was like in Spain.

Her main point is that each of these cultures had many different ideas (both good and bad). It is through all of these different civilizations and their ideas that America was built upon. The European newcomers learned from each group and from the Native Americans that were already here in America.

Out of all of this mixture a new nation developed - the United States.

During the next few weeks students will work with a partner to become a bit of an expert on a specific colony. Kids are busy reading about their colony and later they are going to be responsible to tell a story (through writing) about how their colony began. They will also make of map of what it looked like back in the 1600s. They will then create a poster that they will use during their presentation to the class.

Students will have at least one hour each day to work on this project. This week will be researching, next week writing and drawing the maps. During the week of January 19th they will polish up their presentations.

More to follow...Michelle