We talked about the formula he should use for his reviews. He wanted to keep it short and sweet (as in a sentence or two, with a rating). I, however, want to make this part of his language arts education. I'm older and the adult, so I won this one. :)
We decided that his review would include product information, such as a little history on the brew, when available, and ingredients. And while there would be a rating, of course, he would also justify or qualify his rating.
Using the Internet, of course, I showed him how to try to research Henry Weinhard's root beer. There wasn't much info on the label's actual Web site, but for whatever reason, we found a big ol' PDF entitled "Henry Weinhard's Root Beer Sales Activation Plan" from 2011. It was a treasure trove. From it, CJ was able to glean a bit about the brew's history, as well as a complete ingredient list. Nice!
He worked hard on writing up his review, and had many requests for revisions from his editor (me). We also had to come up with a graphic for his rating, and decided on clip art root beer mugs. It wasn't hard to find a clip art beer mug online (we found several on Microsoft's clip art site). With the magic of Photoshop, we easily changed the beer's yellow color to brown, transforming it into a rootbeer mug. Sweet!
If you'd like to see his finished product, hop on over to therootbeerkid.blogspot.com!
MODEL BEHAVIOR: It seemed like we hadn't been to science class in F-O-R-E-V-E-R, but in reality, w'd just missed a week due to Thanksgiving break.
Today, the class started a new unit, about landforms. For their first activity, they worked in small groups to make models of the school grounds. First, the class did a walking tour of the perimeter of the property, noting manmade structures as well as objects of nature (trees, shrubs and such).
During this walking tour, Annabelle managed to make herself bleed. :/ As we were walking along the playground, she apparently couldn't resist the urge to at least walk on a curb, balance beam style. Two problems with that. One, she was wearing big sloppy snow boots. Two, it was wet and slippery. The combination resulted in her going down, rather hard, really. I was standing close by and had a front row 'seat' to the slow-motion type fall. (You know, one of those tumbles where you *almost* catch yourself a couple of times but wind up wiping out in the end.) Her 'resting' position was her sprawled flat on her belly, straddling the curb. Ouch. Besides damaging her pride, her right palm had a couple of small puncture wounds. Bummer. But she managed to limp and snuffle her way through the rest of the tour, and shook it off by the time we'd gotten back to the classroom.
CJ and Annabelle wound up at the same work table, with one other boy rounding out their group. They had a sand filled tray, some blocks and some sticks to work with to make their school grounds model. For the boys, it rather rapidly devolved into some storytelling thing, involving thieves, wrong way drivers and other flights of fiction. Annabelle stayed on task, with some help from the teacher.
The colored blocks represent cars, the craft sticks are trees in front of the school, and the H shape in the sand represents the school itself.
I haven't played it myself but it looks like it plays homage to the old school 8-bit platform games, but has enough next generation gaming elements to keep others interested, as well.
COOL FIND: A week or so ago, I posted the kids' favorite new music video, 'Dumb Ways to Die." It's gone viral, which means there are parodies popping up now. Imagine our delight when we discovered one today called "Cool Things to Find" starring none other than our favorite Martian rover, Curiosity! Love it!
The student map was very good. Maybe there was a budding geographer in the group. Good first effort for the RB blog
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