This book review was actually not boring! All you have to do was write a book review on a Golden Sower nominee which was one of the nine great books that Nebraska officials picked as being the best in Nebraska. In April 4-6 graders will decide which of these is the best.
First we took notes or did the prewrite. After that we wrote the rough draft, which included three paragraphs. One was suppose to describe why you liked it, one telling what it was about and one describing the theme.
Tomorrow we will edit it then we will compose the final draft. The final draft is an important part of our writing grade.

Did you know that Betsy Ross most likely did not make the first American flag? Well, that is something we learned in art today. We learned about all the unique, magnificent flags and different flags that our nation started with back in 1776 during the Revolutionary War.
After Ms. Sanborn explained to the class what we were doing in art we started to make our own super designs for the American flag. We tried to design one that we might have waved during a battle in the Revolutionary War.
We made our mosaic flags using little, colorful squares of construction paper. We could pick and use any colors we wanted, write words or make anything you like as long as you could explain what it had to do with the war.
Ms. Sanborn's class had a marvelous time in art today. I was glad we made mosaic flags.

Today, four kids from the special Robotics group showed us what they had been doing for the past month.
First they set up a simple maze and had their robots go through it. These cool robots were made out of colorful Legos, wires, and some technology (like a mini computer).
To get the amazing robots to go through the maze, they had a green wheel to make the robots turn. They also had a light sensor that would sense light and dark. When it got to a dark spot, it would do a certain action.
For the finale they had the bots play songs. This was an exciting demonstration.

Gym was tremendous today! My class and I had to run eleven laps of the pacer test. It was tiring, but not that hard!
After the pacer everyone practiced dribbling a soccer ball, kicking it into the wall, and passing the ball to your picked partner.
For the rest of gym we got into equal teams to face off and see who would come out on top in a game of soccer!
The team who came out on top was.... The Red team! They had 5 points while the Blue team was left in the dust with 1 point!

In Music we played our recorders to Hot Crossed Buns. It was pretty cool.

Today for gym we had a field trip! Can you believe that? We went bowling for two hours at Western Bowl and we had a fantastic time! We all got in about three or four games.
Everyone got to bowl in groups of four and there were prizes, too. If you got a spare, you got a sticker. If you got a strike, you got a sticker and a piece of candy, and best of all, if you beat Ms. Sanborn's score you got to pick out of the prize box.
Ms. Sanborn's score was 97, so two of the kids got to pick a prize!
Since we left at noon we had lunch there, too. It was deeelicious! We had a choice between hamburger, chicken nuggets, or hot dog.
So, as you can see, we had a fantastic day with lots of bowling, food and prizes. I wish every day was like today!

Today we watercolored painted a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Some of the flowers were lillies, roses, sunflowers and so much more!
Since we do art every Wednesday you could say we’ve made a lot of art and today we added to our list!
After we learned different techniques of watercolor painting our teacher Ms. Sanborn told us we could sketch our flowers or vases lightly so we knew what we were doing with our paintbrush.
"I think the art we did today was a lot of fun and was really pretty,” stated Brandon.
I hope we do this project again some time.

In Social Studies today we did our final drafts on our People in the Revolutionary War reports.
First, we had to write 5 amazing details or facts about what the person that we drew did or why they were famous in this gigantic war.
Second, we had to do a rough draft using these 5 incredible facts which I thought this was fun to do.
Lastly we completed our final drafts on our famous person today where I learned many brilliant facts about George Washington like he was an important general and the first president.
In conclusion, today we worked hard on our People of the War reports. In our reports we learned that there were many people that were part of the war that were marvelous in helping or doing something in or for the war.

Today my class and I had to research about a different person that was important in the Revolutionary War. If you are wondering why we are doing this, it's because we are studying the Revolutionary War.
I researched John Hancock. He was a part of the "Stamp Act" which was when the British taxed the colonist's stamps to get money for dumping the tea.
Mitch also thought it was fun learning about the people.
First we had to do five notes on them. Then we had to make a rough draft on it. Later we will write a final draft then present.
I can't wait to hear people present theirs!

Mmmm...I love the smell of pizza!
Today 5th grade had their monthly No Lates Potluck. Only 15 students from Ms. Sanborn's class were there. The rest of the class got late slips last month (Feb.) so they weren't invited. There were about 15-18 from the other 2 fifth grade classrooms that came too.
The Potluck had delicious pizza and other foods. I only said pizza because that’s what there was a lot of and the only main dish I ate! There was pizza from Valentino's, Pizza Hut, and Godfathers. But there were other delicious foods too. There was fruit like apples, chips like Fritos, and more, including pop!
Personally my favorite part was dessert. They had many great desert choices like Cookie cake, brownies, cup cakes, and more sweets.
I would like to thank all the 5th grade parents for helping out and of course for the tasty foods and treats!

Have you ever taken a mini Hot Wheel car and put it on a ramp let it go and find its velocity? Today some students from Ms. Sanborn’s class went down to Ms. Wischow’s room and got to do a little experiment about velocity.
To begin with we put the mini Hot Wheel car on a top of a ramp. Then we let it zoom on down the ramp in a certain amount of time and you would need to know how far it went. After that we took the distance divided by the time to figure out the velocity.
This experiment was very thrilling! The people we were working with also let us do an experiment where we got to make a balloon car. I wonder how those balloon cars will turn out?

Today was not a typical Monday. After writing class Ms. Sanborn told us that we were going to the computer lab. This was great news! We didn't have to finish writing. YES! She also told us that we were going to look at a new website. More great news! The web site's name was Rand McNally.
When we got to the computer lab, Ms. Sanborn told us to click on Safari, select 5th grade and sit down in the front of the room. Mrs. Greenwald showed us the password and user name to get into the Rand McNally website. Then she showed us all the the things that we could look at and some of the games that we could play. She showed us how to find information about states and countries that we could use to study for a test or just for fun.
Now it was our turn to check out the Rand McNally website and have fun playing games! I found a trivia game about geography and maps. I thought some of the games were hard because we haven't learned everything yet. Alex thought some of the questions in the games were hard too. We got to mess around and play some of the games for about 15 minutes.
After all that excitement we had to go back to the classroom to get ready for reading. But we left the computer lab knowing how to log onto a new website loaded with fun facts and games.

Have you ever watched the intense game show Jeopardy? Well Ms. Sanborn's class had their own exciting version of Jeopardy today for science review.
Ms. Sanborn was the host who asked the mind-boggling questions. The questions were about energy. Some of the questions were really hard because we never learned about them and had to just take a wild guess. There were several intelligent teams.
To answer the questions we didn’t have cool buzzers like on TV we had to quickly slap the desk to beat our opponents and answer the question. The questions were worth 100 to 500 points. Many students including Charlie and thought the game was exciting, fun and a great way to end the unit.

“May they rest in peace”. You probably have heard those words before, but have you heard of saying them in a 5th grade classroom? If you are in Ms. Sanborn’s class, you heard it today.
This morning in class, we were surprised by a funeral at school. The funeral was for a few words that are overused by fifth graders. The words are “awesome,” “good,” “bad,” “went,” “said,” and “big”. The letters R.I.P were written at the top of a gray construction paper gravestone. Each of the overused words was written on a tombstone. We were put into groups of three or four and were given a gravestone to start with. We added as many juicy words to the stone as we could, then after a minute or two, we passed it to the group next to us.
Alyssa said, “It was exciting to “bury” bad words.”
After we had gotten about four tombstones passed to us, Ms. Sanborn stopped us and ask us to mark the best word on the stone we had. One by one she asked us to share the word. There were some really creative words that really stuck in my memory, like in place of “big” we had “massive” and “obese” and for “went” we used “strolled.”
The idea our teacher tried to get across was that we need to use more spicy words and bury the old lame words. Burying words was an exciting lesson, and it was ever grander than it sounds. May the words rest in peace!

Today we did an art project that had no main object in it. It was called non-objective art. I liked this project a lot because we did not have to have a great art talent to do it.
When Ms. Sanborn showed us some awesome artists and their pieces of non-objective art, as a class we agreed on a definition.
Looking at the art showed us what we were going to do for our art project. We first drew or sketched ours out, then we began painting our projects. They have to be colorful, include lines or have shapes but no objects.
All in all, it was a blast because we learned a new kind of art, and we got to go wacky with it!

Today in science we reviewed, but it wasn't nearly as terrible or boring as it sounds! There was all of this marvelous sticky note stuff! See? Now don't you want to know more?
When Ms. Sanborn told us to get out our science books and Units notebooks we thought we were in for “no” excitement. How lucky for us that Ms. S. had some terrific stuff planned!
Everyone that I asked, including Jenny and Kerrie, said that they loved it. Jenny even said; "I thought it was one of the most fun sciences that we've ever done!"
I think that quote tells a lot, it looks like Jenny had a magnificent perspective on it.
At the beginning of the Energy Unit we wrote 7 wonders and 7 I think I knows in our Units notebook. From those 7, we picked one from each category and wrote our favorite on a sticky note to place on the Energy board for the whole Unit.
Today to review what we had learned from Chapter 14, Energy, Ms. Sanborn asked us if any of our sticky notes that were up on the wall would fit into the "What We Learned" category. First we did "What We Think We Know" then our “I wonders”. We had to explain how it fits in what we learned, what it was, or what it had to do with our energizing unit.
To summarize, we placed sticky notes from one chart to the other and explained how much we had learned in one chapter on science, but you had to be there to see the unbelievable fun and knowledge that was had by all of us!

Did you say Cat in the Hat was..........50? WOW!!
Well anyways, we celebrated his birthday today. Our librarian brought us some cupcakes that were vanilla with white frosting with red and white sprinkles. I thought they were DELICIOUS!!
Our teacher read us the story Cat in the Hat about two kids, a brother and sister who were bored in a house with nothing to do. Then Cat in the Hat came barging in and dismantling the door. He made the house a mess. Then they made him leave and he brought back Thing 1 and Thing 2 and they went crazy. The two kids caught them and the Cat in the Hat had to clean that pigsty up then he left.
Some people actually dressed like The Cat in the Hat at our school. It was amazing!
So all together we celebrated Cat in the Hat's birthday. Also our teacher read us a book.

Today in art class we made stained glass pieces. No one but a 5th grader could have tackled this project!
Our multi-step project was very tricky. We had to use scissors, glue, paints, construction paper, and even transparencies. Andy said he thought this was quite a complicated process and I thought so too. Several of us will need a few more days to complete our masterpieces.
Some students thought of really cool designs. I saw the Texas Longhorn’s logo, a baseball, and just some with curvy lines, abstract like. My design features an 8-ball because I like playing pool.
Even though this was hard, this was the best art project we have had so far. I can't wait to see everyone's finished stained glass project.

Do you know what my class did on math today? Today we played a game called Credits/Debits and it was a fun way to practice adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers!
Are you wondering how to play Credits/Debits? First you need to find a partner, a deck of cards, a dime or penny, and the game sheet.
When you have all of those you first flip the dime/penny which tells you whether you add or subtract (heads=add, tails=subtract). Then you need to pick a card. If you pick a card that is red it's a negative number. If the card is black it's a positive number. Everyone starts with a credit of 10 (+) and the game goes all the way down the game sheet like this (+10 - -5 = +15) or (10 – 5 = +5 ) It’s like we are working in a bank with all these debits and credits.
It was a fun way to review and it was even more fun for those of us who won!