Assembly Line Adventures



Emanuel was proud of his team's car.



Our community studies have encouraged us to read and learn about producers and consumers.  We have found in our reading that producers and consumers are important in our community and they keep our economy going.  This week, we have been learning about factory workers as producers.  Factory workers usually work in an assembly line.  Assembly lines help to speed up quality production.  In our class, we split into groups and assigned assembly line jobs to help build a paper car.  Team 2 (Rebecca, Jennifer, Noah, Karen, Dominique, Xavier, and Destiny) won for completing a quality car at a quick pace.  We wrote about our experience with the assembly line and the factors that help and hurt production. We will use what we learned (along with our art skills) in a real assembly line with Ms. Dickerson's class on Friday!

Stay tuned next week for an update about our assembly line adventures!

Crayola

In social studies, we are learning about producers and consumers, factories, and assembly lines.  We have been reading about the Crayola crayon factory in Pennsylvania.  We are using what we are learning about crayons to integrate different subject areas in our classroom.  Soon, we will be talking about states of matter in science.  Ballard's Believers are curious to see how crayons will fit into our learning about solids and liquids.

January's Leader of the Month

Congratulations to Jennifer!  Ballard's Believers voted her the Leader of the Month for January.  Each student in our class wrote an opinion paper explaining who, in their opinion, is the best leader in our class.  These opinion papers were counted as votes for the Leader of the Month.  In order to win, she had to have the most votes cast for her.   Here are some of the things her classmates wrote about Jennifer:

• Jennifer always makes proactive choices.
• She always follows directions.
• She sometimes makes mistakes, but she fixes them and doesn't make them again.
• She follows the 7 Habits of Happy Kids.
• She doesn't talk when she's not supposed to.
• She cares about others.

Community

In our classroom, we have been learning to ask questions when we read to help us understand the text.  We read some nonfiction about communities and our curious minds had lots of questions.  Throughout the rest of the year, everything we study will be tied into learning about communities.  We have started talking about wants and needs, producers and consumers, and supply and demand.  These topics will help us understand the people in a community and how the economy works within a community.  Ballard's Believers are excited about our community adventures!