First School Store

After much anticipation and preparation the Alchemists had their first school store. They learned how to count money, make change, unit pricing, preparing receipts and the all important customer service. The Alchemists felt like it went really well and are excited to continue School Store through out the year to raise money for their trip to Nature Bridge.

Getting to Know Tacoma

The Alchemists continue learning about Tacoma and how a city works. They spent over an hour Thursday morning with the Director of Economic Development, Richardo Noguera, learning about the many new projects underway in Tacoma and how they impact the economy.

In the afternoon we went to the Police Headquarters and had a tour led by two of the officers. The Alchemists saw the holding cells, the evidence lockers and met a sergeant and got to look at his equipment. But the big excitement was going in the garage to see the armored vehicles, the SWAT Team's trucks and meet the team that runs the bomb robot. They got to try on the helmet the bomb team wears and look at the robot up close and ask many questions.

We have many field studies left to go including visits to MultiCare, meetings with the City Attorney and City Council members. We are learning so much!

Math!

The students are excited about getting into their math books.  We have 3 different math groups in the class.  Each group takes a pre-test at the beginning of the chapter and only completes lessons that each individual needs.  There are times when the different groups will be working together, while at other times, they will have separate lessons.  

During each lesson, students are asked to complete a set of problems on their individual white board to show understanding of a concept.  Once students have shown comprehension, they are asked to do problems in their math book.

But students are not just working in their math books this year.  They work weekly on math that relates to our overarching concept and science and social studies topics.  Examples of this include calculating electoral college votes and creating a timeline using scale.  

We are also working in groups to create a farmers' market.  Students have been working on their concept and thinking about the types of stores they want in their market.  This past week, they drew a rough draft of their market, keeping in mind the flow, design, and placement of shops.  They then drew a scale model of their market using graph paper.  In the coming weeks, students will research who in the city is in charge of the market and how much it costs to run a market.  

Fossils

The Alchemists have been learning about the different kinds of fossils and how fossils are formed. To model this they made trace, mold and cast fossils with Model Magic, toy dinosaurs and plaster. They then filled a milk carton with plaster and objects, let them dry and found how hard it can be to carefully excavate their "fossils" like a paleontologist.

Field Study

This year the fifth grade is spending every Thursday at the middle school providing great opportunities for field study. Today we walked to the Pierce County Democratic Headquarters and talked to workers there about the upcoming election and what they do to try to get voters to complete and mail in their ballots. The biggest message we heard was how important it is to vote and the Alchemists were encouraged to sit with their parents when they vote to further understand the candidates and issues.

Another Great Week!

The MakerSpace is one of Seabury's great new additions and very popular with all the classes, including the Alchemists. This week we had time to go to the MakerSpace and some of the kids were working on a car model complete with padded seats, gear shift and radio.

Most of the kids got into the shelves of used electronics we have available for taking apart. Educational? You bet. Not only did they look at how the radios, disc drives and CD players worked but they also learned how to use hand tools, a valuable life skill. Many of them started the session not knowing the difference between types of screw drivers or how to use wire cutters but by the time they were done they were all feeling very confident. And we got a bunch of new wire and circuit boards to use for future projects!

On Thursday we went to the Middle School and took a long walk to Wright Park. Why did we go to Wright Park? The Alchemists explain:

"We went to Wright Park so we could learn about the history of Wright Park. We also went to see what the city pays for."

"I think we walked to the park because it was run by the city. The city wanted to have a place for kids to have fun and play."

"Yesterday we went to Wright Park because we are studying Tacoma's budget and expenses. We also went because it was one of the first public parks in Tacoma."

"We went to Wright Park to go on on a nice walk. We also talked about the city of Tacoma."

"We went to Wright Park to try and find things that the city ran. We found things like the roads, power poles, and parks like Wright Park. It was interesting to learn about this. I hope we can go further into this topic."

The Alchemists are now quite comfortable at the Middle School and love going out to lunch at the Farmer's Market.

We ended the week with Grandparents/Special Friends Day. We had many visitors and the Alchemists got to be guides before they shared math, the computer lab, book fair and MakerSpace. And there was cake which makes any event a success! Thanks for coming Grandparents and Special Friends!

Geologic Time Scale

How long ago is 4.6 billion years? If you make a time line where every inch represents 5 million years then you need a really long piece of paper, like over 75 feet!
The Alchemists made geologic time scales and soon discovered that not only has the Earth been around a long time but life on Earth hasn't been around very long at all, inches out of that 75 feet. The Alchemists are just beginning to look at all of this as they learn about the Earth's evolution.