Mrs. Goucher's Class Blog

The following article and Animoto was created by Sarah, Melissa, Rudy, Bailey, and Heath. Enjoy!

On December 12, 2011, our school had a “Science Night”. These are some of the awesome activities we did that night. The Phoenix Zoo came to the school and brought 4 desert animals.  The first animal they showed us was a desert tortoise.  Then they showed us a cactus mouse, it was so cute and fuzzy.  After that they showed us a gopher snake and a burrow owl.

Another project we did was “How To Make A Balloon Blow Up Without Your Hands Touching It”. The first step you do is to get an empty plastic water bottle, baking soda, a balloon and vinegar.  Then you fill the bottle to the first line with vinegar.  Then put baking soda in the balloon and put the balloon on the bottle.

Another project was to make tree cookies.  We learned that the state tree has green bark and is called a Palo Verde tree.  We also learned that if a tree is healthy it will fight of bad bugs, but if not it will die.  If a tree gets hit by lightning, when you cut the tree you can see where it got hit.

We did one activity that generates energy.  You crank and make power and light up a light bulb.  We learned what a power plant does every day.

We also learned from a master gardener about many natural plants in our desert.  There are some that you can eat and some that you can use to make medicine.

In one of the classrooms there was a test to see how good your brain works.  In the test, they showed color words written in a different color than the word.  We had to say the color of the word, not the word.  It was very complicated.  There were also many illusions on paper in the same room.  An illusion is something that seems different than what it actually is.  It was really cool!

We also went to see “Mr. Chemistry”.  He demonstrated experiments with dry ice.  One of the things he did was put a piece of dry ice into a container of red liquid and make it into carbon dioxide.  He also poured carbon dioxide onto a lit candle and that caused it to go out.  He also mixed carbon dioxide, water and dish soap to make a huge bubble.  Thank goodness the bubble didn’t pop and splatter everywhere!

We also saw a butterfly and it had laid eggs in a plant.  We found two caterpillars in the plant.  We also saw a chrysalis.  We also got to make seed balls.  I rolled a seed ball.  My brother put in 5 teaspoons of dirt stuff and I put in 2 teaspoons of seeds.  We mixed it and rolled it.  That was something fun to do!

There were many more activities kids could do at Science Night.  It was a fun night of learning!

Do you have science night at your school?  What activity would you have at your science night?

by student bloggers Nicolas and Soledad, and photographer Rudy, written for Edublogs Student Challenge #6: Global Issues 

How do coupons benefit the consumer? How much money can you save on one shopping trip? These are the questions we are asked to explore in our coupon project. Our coupon project can help Project Help by getting household items we can donate.

Our class is doing a coupon project to see which two stores you can get the most items for free. We want to see which route cost the least amount of gas to help the environment at the same time. Our math teacher is also an extreme coupon-er. She has gotten lots of items for free to donate.

by student bloggers Rudy and Soledad for Blogging Challenge #8: Are you connecting?

We are in different fourth grade classes and this our first year involved in blogging. “I like that we get to meet a lot of new friends on the Internet,” says Soledad. Rudy added, “I like that you get to see a lot of comments that people make, and that you can see what other classes are doing and their special projects they are working on.” They both love that their families comment on their class blogs. Their families comment frequently, including parents and all their different aunts and uncles.

Their families learned about the blogs because the teachers have informed the parents, and because it was easy to find the blogs because they frequently link to each other. Then the relatives heard about all the cool things they are learning, so they wanted to see it too… and then they started commenting about their projects.

Does your family like to hear about what you are learning? If so, you should have them comment on the blog.

How do you get family participation on your blog?

by Izabell, Melissa, and Richard G.

Our class wrote a post last week about Arizona’s Natural Resources. Our challenge this week, is to be creative with our blog post. So, we used the ShowMe App on the iPad to create our post. Turn up your volume and listen to our discussion on the 5C’s:

What do you think would happen if Arizona had a shortage of one of their 5 C’s?

How does this relate to conservation of resources?

by Kimberly and Will

Our Edublogs Student Challenge #4 is to share what we want to learn more about and why. We chose to learn more about the Pueblo culture because we might learn about our own culture, and who inhabited our country before we became the United States.

The Pueblo lived in the “four corners” of New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. The Pueblos were good at bonding with others, especially in hard times.

They went to war with the Spaniards who moved into their land and were ruling the area. In 1680, the Pueblo decided to join up with other Native American tribes to battle the Spaniards. It didn’t work because the Spaniards took over all of the Pecos Pueblo land, in 1692.

The Spaniards burned down all the statues of their gods and buildings. Many Native Americans were taken prisoners and later executed.

What did you learn about the Pueblos?

How do you think they influenced our culture?