They're Done......!!!!! :)

We have FINALLY finished our Powerpoint Presentations!!!  Yay!!!!  We are so super excited!  The students worked EXTREMELY hard on these and Mrs. Gaston is very proud!  Mrs. Gaston is still working on figuring out how to load the Powerpoints on here for you to see so cross your fingers she can figure it out.  Pictures to come... :)

Still Working...

Sorry we haven't posted recently.  We haven't really had anything "exciting" to report.  We're still working very hard on our Powerpoints and they are coming together nicely.  We've typed our info, picked out backgrounds, added photos, and included videos.  We're working on the editing and revising part right now and it's taking us a little longer than expected.  We hope to be finished by the end of the week so we can share with you.  :)  Wish us luck!

Dr. Doug

Dr. Doug came to visit with us today.  WE LOVE HIM!  He is so smart and teaches us so many exciting things.  Today, we learned about "Scary Skies".  His motto is "don't be scared, be prepared". 

He taught us that when thunderstorms form it's because hot air pressure and low air pressure come together causing a front. 

After we made a front we formed a tornado. 

Here's a video of our tornado activity.  Sorry there's no sound.  :(

He also taught us about safety precautions to take in case of a storm.  We learned that if you are outside and can't get indoors when lightning strikes you should get in the "lightning crouch". Be sure your heels are touching (if not, the lightning can run straight to your heart)!

Before he left, he read us a book called Trinia's Twister Tales that one of his former students wrote. 

This and That...

Wow do we have some catching up to do!  We have been super busy learning about weather and are half way through our Powerpoints.  We're a little behind on posting so we'll use this as our catch up post.  :) 

This nine weeks in Math we're learning about measurement.  One form of measurement that we've become very familiar with is the thermometer.  We worked with partners to create a theremometer with a "hot" temperature and a "cold" temperature and wrote about them.  We're becoming experts with thermometers.  Check us out!  :)

DID YOU KNOW???  Remember when we posted about the Discovery Space Shuttle Launch?  Well it's back at the Kennedy Space Center!  We watched video of the Discovery taking off for space a couple weeks ago for it's final mission.  Today was a very exciting day because we got to see it return safely home.  It landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:57am.  We rushed to lunch early so that we wouldn't miss it.  Here are some pictures from the day.  Click here to see the landing.

Check out the cloud cover in the background as the shuttle orbits the Earth.

If you look closely, you can see Earth in the background.

We learned that they use a parachute to help slow the shuttle down once it's landed.

We've finally finished our research and are working on our Powerpoints.  We have been doing such a great job!  Most of us had never heard of a Powerpoint before and now we've created one and are adding animation, pictures, and videos.  We're hoping we'll have our finished product next week.  :)

Got Rain?

That was SOME storm!  We observed almost every kind of severe weather that we've been learning about.  We checked our rain gauge from yesterday and found that it collected 2 inches of rainfall.

We also started working on our presentations about severe weather.  We are still in the planning stages but it's moving along well.

Preparing for a Storm

Today we continued working on our "Severe Weather" projects from last week.  We researched safety precautions to take during severe weather and will start working on our Powerpoint presentations tomorrow.

On another note...

We have been watching the weather forecast and heard there is supposed to be a huge storm tomorrow.  They are calling for lots of rain.  Since we've been learning about rain gauges, we decided to put our class rain gauge out to measure the amount of rainfall.

Check back tomorrow to see how much rain was collected...

Discovery's Final Launch

So we got to witness something fabulous today!  We've been learning all about weather and our mission is to learn as much as we can to "train NASA staff on the best weather conditions for a launch".  Well guess what????  We watched video of the Discovery shuttle's final launch today and we even heard a meteorologist from NASA talking about the weather conditions during the launch.  Cool right?  We know!  Look at these cool pictures from the launch...



Here are some of the videos we watched today.  Click here for the briefing before the launch and the weather conditions for launch day.  Click here for video of the launch.

Severe Weather

Severe weather...what's that???  We learned about different kinds of severe weather today.  We split into our learning groups and each researched a type of severe weather.  We researched tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, winter storms, and thunderstorms.  (Meteorologists have to do research you know.)  We have to learn as much as we can about our type of severe weather so that we can teach the rest of the class.  Here are some pictures of the meteorologists in Room 718 hard at work!

After our research, we get to do experiments making severe weather.  Sounds exciting right???  Don't be scared...we'll keep it contained.  :)

Still looking...

Today we continued our research on weather patterns across the US.  After seeing some of the weather in other parts of the US we're pretty glad we leave in SC right now.  :)  Our weather has been BEAUTIFUL the past couple of weeks!