Fifth graders have had an excellent first two weeks back in gifted class! We began our first day reviewing our "Daily Menu" and got right to work. First on the menu was our "Brain Boggler." This is a critical and creative thinking sheet we will do each day to exercise our brains. Be sure to check out your child's brain boggler sheet in their binder. We talked about our school "Recipe for Success" theme and after discussion about ingredients for a great year students wrote their own personal "recipe" for their school year. Ask your child what ingredients they chose. What day in the "kitchen" would be complete without making tasty treats? We created our own trail mix and we talked about what ingredients each item represented (goldfish=teamwork; marshmallows= kindness; pretzel sticks=we stick togther, m&m's=fun, etc.) What a yummy and fun activity!
Today we learned about a cartoonist named Rube Goldberg. Rube Goldberg was known for taking a simple task and making it extraordinarily complicated. Rube Goldberg drew cartoons of contraptions such as – an elaborate set of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups and rods, put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles and live animals. He had solutions for How To Get The Cotton Out Of An Aspirin Bottle, imagined a Self-Operating Napkin, and created a Simple Alarm Clock to name a few. Our plan is to sketch our own cartoons and eventually build our own Rube Goldberg contraptions. We can't wait!
