CAL Community School District

1st grade pretended to trade different goods and services today in social studies!

3rd grade had to visit some of new creatures living in the C.E.L.L.

Today the 3 year olds came down to visit the critters in the CELL. They were doing an activity with the axolotl, but while they were waiting they got to check out the dart frogs and salt water aquarium. They even got to help feed the frogs!

2nd grade began a new science/innovation club/reading project today! They are learning about the diversity of organisms in different habitats. They began today by picking different organisms from different habitats and then began researching by watching videos of different habitats. Tomorrow they will continue their research with some books as well!

More 1st grade squishy circuit pictures!

1st grade has been learning about light and its ability to illuminate objects. They are also learning about creating physical models of things to explain their thinking. Today they got to explore squishy circuits! They were very creative! We had pumpkins, snakes, the sun, and many more designs! It required some critical thinking using insulating dough to get all their designs to light up!

Some action shots of creating the vibrobots!

Last year our 2nd graders created brush bots with various materials! This year they were challenged to create a fall themed Vibrobot! They were free to use any of our supplies in the CELL. Their challenge was to test and determine which materials would work best to make their Vibrobot successful in moving the way they wanted it too. We are still in the process of finishing our bots, but a few students have their bots moving up and down the hall!

4th graders working on multi step problems using a ‘vertical work’ stragety one of our interventions brought back and shared with the CAL staff from a math conference. Our students are so engaged in their learning! They have to work together with only one marker, and the big challenge… the one with the marker can’t share their own thinking! This challenges them to listen to others and explain their thinking. Great work, 4th grade!

Preschool and Pre K BINGO!!

Fire safety for the Preschoolers! Thanks so much to the CAL firefighters for helping to keep us safe!

Preschool made apple sauce!! The whole process from picking good apples to measuring and tasting!

Kindergarten has been working hard! This week we got out our picture readers! They are so excited to be reading their own book!

Kinders have been working on spelling simple CVC words! Today they spelled words while stomping on the letters to spell the words!

More fire safety pictures of 1st grade!

1st grade enjoyed the firefighters today to learn about fire safety!

6th grade has been learning about Drones as a computing device that has changed the world. We have learned about internal and external hardware of a drone as well as the software used with drones. We discussed flight safety and today the 6th graders began designing, sketching, and building launch pads for their drones.

1st grade enjoyed a new story with Mrs. Jacobs yesterday while they got to get new books from the library!

3rd grade has been conducting investigations about unbalanced forces. Recently they created marble mazes where they used a magnet (under the cardboard) to control their marble to move through their maze. As each group went, we recorded what went well and what changes we might make. Now 3rd grade is in the process of connecting everyone’s mazes to form one giant maze as a class.

In social studies, kindergarten is getting ready to explore the environmental characteristics of Iowa, but before we do that, we are learning that Iowa is the state we live in! Today Kindergarten got to explore different maps that all had Iowa on them! We also explored as a class on Google Earth!