We hope you had a relaxing week off for Spring Break!  Julia and I both had camping experiences of sorts – Julia camped out in Point Reyes, and I stayed in a treehouse with indoor plumbing in Santa Cruz.  We are so lucky to live in California!

We wanted to catch you up with some glimpses from Book Week.  We welcomed Gennifer Choldenko, author of Al Capone Does My Shirts and Chasing Secrets.  She talked about how she often gets ideas – from books she reads or places that she visits.  For the Al Capone books (there are three!), she spent time as a volunteer at Alcatraz to find out more about the men who guarded and took care of the inmates.  They lived on the island prison with their families, and Gennifer wanted to know more about what it was like to live in such close proximity to “America’s worst criminals”.

Chasing Secrets is her newest book and it is about the plague that happened in San Francisco at the turn of the century.  Exploring the idea of the plague in San Francisco, she invited up a Temescalian to exhibit “Blue Dog disease” and other kids who came up with a cure.

Thank you for donating books for the Book Swap!  We had the chance to select a book that was new to us to bring home.  The selection was fantastic, and we were introduced to new stories and reminded of old favorites.

We were ready for the Read-A-Thon, but before we got there, we did a lot of learning & researching in between!
In Science, we invited a guest speaker, Alicia, to talk to us about rain gardens and what role they play in an urban environment to simulate the wetlands.  Ask your Temescalian about what a rain garden does.  We learned about the different materials and how much water they absorb.  Knowing that soil absorbs more water than clay, it would make more sense to put soil in a rain garden than clay.  We created our own little rain garden to see how much water a proper rain garden can capture, and we were surprised by how much water can actually fit into a rain garden!  For more information, click on these links!
What is a rain garden?
Rain Garden Network 
Promoting Environmental Stewardship Through Rain Garden

We also connected what we have learned about the properties of water  – density and surface tension, to help us better understand what a marshy wetland habitat might be like.  We guessed what the flow of the freshwater and salt water would be, and after thinking about the egg in the salt and fresh water experiment, we concluded that the salt water is more dense so it sinks to the bottom while the fresh water is on top.  What does this matter?  It affects the living creatures in the water!  Salt water creatures would be found in the lower levels of a marshy wetland whereas the freshwater creatures would be closer to the surface of the water!  But what does that mean?  Adaptations!  Plants and animals adapt according to where they live.  Thus, where you live affects how you live!

We talked about how we can educate the school community about what rain gardens are and how we can care for the existing rain garden by the Art Studio!

Our local plant and animal research is under way!  The Temescalians have jotted notes from their book and online resources.  We have practiced turning these notes into sentences that are our own.  This exercise can sometimes be challenging, but we don’t want to be pirates of plagiarism either!  With Rebecca, the resident librarian, she guided us through the Berkeley Public Library database to find more resources for our research.

Our Math unit on graphing tied in perfectly with the Read-a-thon.  We plan on gathering data on how many pages we as a class have read, as well as the different genres covered.  There are many different types of graphs – pictograph, bar graph, pie graph, line graph.  Each type of graph serves a different purpose and helps us consider facets of the facts as we interpret the data.

Finally, here are some snapshots of the Read-A-Thon!  We love reading!  All. Day. Long!  We had grown ups join us in the morning and a guest came in to read Treasure Island!

We also read with our 7th grade Buddies!

Julianne came by to teach us how to make 3-D castle books!

We also celebrated a Temescalian’s birthday!

Look for the next blog post that covers this week!  But a few upcoming things:
– Wrap Party on 4/30!  Julia and I are already thinking about what 80s outfit to wear!
– We’ll be visiting the Berkeley Public Library next Wednesday, 4/27 with Rebecca.  Please send your Temescalian in with her/his library card!