My First Blog In Science we've been learning about an equinox and what it is. The word Equinox comes from equi, meaning equal and nox, meaning night. An equinox is when there is the same amount of daylight as there is nighttime. This happens because the equator is closest to the suns rays at the time. The equinox happened last night at 11:09 PM and the next will occur approximately 6 months from then. We are also learning about Monarch Butterflies and their stages of life. We had a caterpillar but it changed into a chrysalis and is now currently changing inside into a butterfly and will be out soon. My science teacher, Mr. B. recorded the caterpillar making its chrysalis and we will watch it sped up. In Math we are picking potatoes from the garden and bringing them back to class to weigh them. We are using two different scales, one has three weights on it, which are each used to even out the weight between them and the object and are placed on increments of ones, tens and hundreds. Another is where you place the object on one tray and you add and take off weights on the other tray until it is completely balanced. During P.E. we are starting a unit of Basketball and we are learning to pass, shoot, block and dribble the ball. There are certain ways to do each thing such as when you dribble, you have to keep your eyes up, dribble below your waist and use the tips of your fingers, not the palm of your hand. We also did a fun game called Nitro Crossing where there is a rope and you have to get the whole class across one line to the other without touching the ground between the two lines. You also have to bring a bucket of whiffle balls (Nitro) across without any of it falling out. While at Life Skills and Tech. Ed., we've been sewing hats for our pumpkins and making our own ping pong paddles. First for the ping pong paddles we had to trace out our own design on construction paper and then onto wood. After that, Mr. V. cut out design and now we are sanding their edges. In Social Studies we are learning about the climate zones of earth. There are three climate zones spread out over the earth in to seven imaginary lines. The three climate zones are the low latitudes/tropical, the middle latitudes/temperate and the high latitudes/polar. At Language Arts, we are writing sensory stories about pictures cut out of magazines. First we would pick a picture, then we would write a story about it using the five senses and finally we sat in a circle on the bean bags and read aloud the story and showed off the picture. Lastly, at French, we took four tests so far about the alphabet and 24 basic French expressions like bonjour, which means good day and salut, which means hi. We also played a game where the class was divided in half, the red team and the blue team and Madame Jarvis would say a word in English and we would have to race to see who could write it out first correctly. Then whoever got the word spelled correctly first would win a point for their team.