Similes

Our class has been looking for and creating similes. We know that similes compare two unlike things using like or as.

A icicle drips like a broken faucet.
My sky ball bounces like a frog.
A flashlight shines like the sun.
She was beaming like a sunrise.
She took off like a cheetah.
She crawls like a turtle.
The bunny hops like a frog.
The pumpkin is as plump as a turkey!
She runs like a cat.
The pumpkin is as gooey as slime.
The turkey scurries like a mouse.
A baby crawls like a snail.
The turkey is as fast as lightening.
The puppy crawls like my baby sister Harper.
A pumpkin is like a fat mouse that ate to much cheese.
An elephant runs like a guy on a treadmill.
A flashlight shines like a star.
The water shines like glitter.
The leaf is like a piece of paper.
That sword shines like the sun.
That leaf is as orange as a pumpkin.
Caterpillars crawl like baby's.
He hops like a frog.

Chemistry Experiments

Yesterday we welcomed Dr. Shoshanna Coon, a Chemistry Professor at UNI, to our classroom to lead us in some exciting chemistry experiments! The students had a great time learning about many different chemistry concepts and it was a lot of fun!

Electrical Circuits

We began our unit on Electrical Circuits with a discussion of the things we know and questions we have about electricity. Then, today we tried to find the ways to light a bulb, only using 1 wire, 1  bulb, and 1 battery. The students were able to find one way to light the bulb and recorded the explanation with the illustration of the way that worked.

We learned that it worked when we put the bulb on the positive side of the battery (the tip touching the battery) and attached the wire at the bottom (negative) side of the battery and the other end of the wire was to the base of the lightbulb.

The battery, wire, and the bulb work together to make a circuit. There is a path for electricity to travel from one end of the battery back to the other end.

Tomorrow we will try to find more ways to light the bulb, using only the battery, wire, and bulb.

Suffix --tion

We have been learning about suffixes. We learned that a suffix is a letter or group of letters added to the end of a root word to change the meaning of the word. We reviewed the suffix --s (more than one), --ed (happened in the past), and --ing (happening right now).
We used a word from Pecos Bill, admiration, to help us learn about the suffix --tion. We learned that the suffix --tion turns a verb into a noun. We looked at many different words with the suffix --tion to determine the root word. We also learned that some words end with --tion, but they are not a suffix.

inspiration: inspire
exaggeration: exaggerate
deprivation: deprive
multiplication: multiply
addition: add
subtraction: subtract

The students are continuing to look for words with the suffix --tion and we will continue to work on these words next week.

Figurative Language

We began learning about figurative language today. We learned that authors use figurative language to compare two things. We focused on similes today (when authors compare two things using the words "like" or "as" and looked for examples of similes in tall tales and legends. The students discovered the following similes in our stories:

• his head looked as swollen and as orange as a jack-o-lantern
• his elbows stuck out like a grasshopper's legs
• arms flapped up and down ling wings
• black coat fluttered behind him like a sail
• hoof beats falling like a military march
• their gnarled branches almost looked like arms reaching out
• feet as big as shovels
• he looked like a scarecrow escaped from a cornfield
• neck like a turkey's
• head like a hammer
• plump as a partridge
• ripe and rosy cheeked as one of her father's peaches