Change-makers, Pi Day, and Leprechaun Trap Engineering!

The Whales started the week by learning what a Change-maker is. We made some educated guesses before hand. Whales thought Change-makers might be someone who changes something, someone who helps the earth, somebody who grabs something and changes it. They had so many ideas of what a Change-maker could be. After we made our best guesses, we had an interactive read aloud of The Lorax book. We saw that the Once-ler was being greedy and only cared about making money and growing his business. The Whales noticed that the book starts with dark images, and as more and more trees get cut down the dark the illustration gets. At the end of the story, the Once-ler noticed what he had done wrong and invited the Whales to help plant more Truffala tree seeds so that the air can be cleaner, the Bar-Ba-Loots and the other animals could come back and live happily in their habitat. After we read the book we had a discussion about the characteristics of a Change-maker. There are three steps to be a Change-maker. Those three steps are; 1. Identifying a problem (looking for a problem), 2. Seeks a solution (How can we solve this problem?), 3. Bring people along with them. We had a discussion about how the Once-ler identified the problem at the end of the book, he looked for a solution, and he invited us to come with him to solve that problem. The Whales will continue this study in the following weeks.

On Wednesday the Whales created cards to put next to their Leprechaun traps. These cards had different tricky and enticing sentences. Some Whales wrote, “Come on in Leprechaun. This is not a trap.” and “There are sweet treats inside”. The Whales sounded out their words and made sure that they had felicity writing so the Leprechauns could read their words. Later in the day, the Whales decorated their cards with different green, golden, and shiny materials. They look very fancy and will definitely attract a Leprechaun.

During math this week the Whales focused on place value. They played a game called Speedy Bugs Love to Race to 100. They did an amazing job of rolling their dice. Collecting their ones, and when they had enough ones they packed their bags and they grabbed a ten stick. They worked on counting by tens, and counting on. Once they had 10 ten sticks they grabbed a hundreds plate and completed the game. They are becoming such strong mathematicians. We also celebrated Pi day this week and played many math games while also learning alittle bit about the number Pi. We made a chocolate-pudding pie that we were able to measure. We measured the circumference, the diameter, and did some fancy dividing on a calculator. We got 3.14! We also measured the circle plates we were going to eat our pie on. After dividing the circumference with the diameter, it also came to be 3.14! Wow! Circles are cool!

Like always, Friday was a busy day! We had Ms. Ren come in to be our Leprechaun Mystery Reader. She read a book that was a perfect lead in for our Leprechaun trap engineering. We went to Taylor-Meade auditorium and watched the lovely performance from the Sea Lions. They did a spectacular job in the Pirates From Grammar Island musical! We planned our Leprechaun designs and engineered our traps! A huge shoutout to Ms. Shelby King for helping the Whales through the craziness that is Leprechaun trap making. The Whales did a lovely job designing their traps. We ended our day with reading with our Sea Lion buddies. We of course had to give them a Whale round of applause for their beautiful performance. What fun seeing our buddies rock it on stage!

We hope everyone has a great sunny weekend, and cross your fingers we catch a Leprechaun!