St. Patrick's Day

Last week, we read Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato, which is an Irish folktale. It's about an Irishman who tricks the people in his village so he can continue to be lazy. After we read it, we made some crazy big potatoes of our own. 

Another fun St. Patrick's activity was watching some carnations turn green by using green water. First, we cut off the ends:

Then we added green food coloring. 

We left them overnight and in the morning, the carnations were green! 

On Friday, we also had the pleasure of being taught by the 7th and 8th graders.  They taught a religion lesson on the creation story. Here they are helping our class make pictures:

They'll be back again in April to teach the story of Daniel and the Lions' Den.  

Your child got a new memory work sheet for the month of April today.  We'll be memorizing the Lord's Prayer and Luther's morning prayer.  I'm guessing most of the kids already know the Lord's prayer, but I want to make sure everyone has it completely memorized. 

Report cards go home tomorrow for the third quarter!

I have much to catch up on...
Let's start with Dr. Seuss' birthday on March 2nd. We listened to The Cat in the Hat  and made hats.

We also had Dr. Seuss themed work stations last week. This one is making words with the letters on the page... 

and this one is sorting nouns, adjectives, and verbs.  

We explored chemical changes in science by tarnishing pennies in vinegar.

Then we took a different crop of pennies (most of them 30 or 40 years old) and tried to make them clean. We tried washing them in soapy water, but not much changed. 

I had some other materials set out for the students to use, and eventually they discovered that salt mixed with vinegar makes pennies shiny and new again. 

Another project we worked on last week was these prayer posters: 

In religion class, we talked about the story of the woman who asked Jesus for healing for her sick daughter.  This story lends itself well to learning how to pray.  We used this acrostic to remember things to include in a prayer:

Praise (praise God for all he has done)

Repent (confess your sins)

Ask (ask God for things pertaining to other people)

Yourself (ask God for things that pertain to you)