Week 21- Taxing the Colonists, Bucket List, & 100th Day

I've had a few emails about my photos not loading correctly on my blog so I'm trying something a little different this week. Thanks to those of you who let me know. I'll also be working on getting a new design to help solve the problem. If you have suggestions of where I can find some cute blog designs I'd love to hear from you. I really want red, black, and white with polka dots to match my classroom. I truly appreciate the fact that I have followers and I'm excited that I can share things that other teachers want to use in their classrooms.

This week we started Pasta for Pennies. We are raising money for leukemia and cancer research. We had a visitor come to the school and talk to everyone about cancer. He had volunteers wearing red caps (red blood cells), white caps (white blood cells), and purple caps (cancer cells) to demonstrate cancer and chemo.The students who represented chemotherapy were dressed similar to Power Rangers.

The white and red blood cells were just hanging out until the cancer cells came in and pushed them all together. Once the chemo was injected they came in and "killed" the cancer cells. It was a really neat demonstration and presented in a way that all the students could understand.

We also learned how the colonists felt when they were taxed after the French and Indian War.

We used Skittles for money and each student had 18 of them. King (or Queen in our case) George and Parliament decided what to tax. Then the tax collector went around the room collecting taxes. Our tax collector was not a very popular person after she had to collect taxes on jewelry, glasses, pants, and other items. This helped the students understand how the colonists felt about being taxed. 

Friday was the 100th day of school so we had a little fun! Some of the students dressed like they were 100 years old.

   

We wrote a Bucket List of things to do before turning 100.

  

 

I displayed these in the hallway along with pictures we made. I found an app called Aging Booth. I took pictures of the kids and it ages them! Needless to say, this was a huge hit. No one liked their picture but we all looked old. Check out a few of them.

  

 

I even had them do one for me (I didn't like mine either). 

As you probably know, we had been doing random acts of kindness for a few months. My students have really embraced this and done nice things for people. Several left thank you notes for their mailman and others have been leaving notes for each other. I even had several special notes left for me this week. They really made my day!

STUDENTS: Did you show a random act of kindness this week? Share what you did and why. Why is it important to do good things for others?

Week 16- Unfair Taxes & Handwashing

Since this week was Hand Washing Week we did a little experiment. I gave each kid some germs (special powder) to rub into their hands. Then we looked at our hands under a black light. Then I had different kids "wash" their hands different ways: water only, soap and water, and hand sanitizer. Here are the results.

Washed with soap and water


Washed with hand sanitizer

Washed with water only


The kids were a bit grossed out when we talked about how hand sanitizer kills the germs but leaves them on your hands. Maybe we'll have some good hand washing taking place now.

We are also learning about events leading up to the Revolutionary War. I randomly picked a king (in this case we used a queen) and members of Parliament. We also had a tax collector (pictured in the back).


Each of the colonists earned skittles. Then the king and Parliament declared taxes on certain items to help pay for the French and Indian War.



After this the kids could understand why the colonists felt like this was so unfair. Here you can see a student trying to figure out how he can pay the tax on pencils when he has more pencils than skittles.



Our class has also been learning about the digestive system. I grossed a lot of them out this week with the video below. It shows the steps in the digestive system. Their reaction was priceless!



STUDENTS: This week we helped our nurse start an experiment at school. Tell our readers about the experiment and what you did. I would also like you to make a prediction about what you think will happen with our experiment and why you think that. Don't forget to "kill" because!