July 25th, 2014

Sacred Heart students had a blast this week!  Literally.  We celebrated a dinosaurs and volcanoes theme!

We had a chance to learn about some very cool dinosaurs with names I could only pronounce if I was a paleontologist or a 10-year-old boy.

And we got to examine volcanoes, learning a new song, too.

(To the tune of "Frère Jacques")
 
Old volcano, old volcano
Is asleep, is asleep
Shhh... don't wake it, shhh...don't wake it
It's asleep, it's asleep.

Old volcano, old volcano
Is awake! Is awake!
Rumble, rumble, grumble
Rumble, rumble, grumble
Blows its top! Blows its top!

One student, vacationing in Hawaii,  came back with gifts; a new volcano book and samples of volcanic rocks that we took turns inspecting.

We also discussed fossils and how they're made.  Then, we made our own fossils.

Meanwhile, in Ms. Rebecca's class, their dinosaurs left behind painted footprints.

We fished out magnetic dinosaurs...

...we put together dinosaur puzzles...

...and we painted volcanoes, too!

So did Ms. Rebecca and Miss Gabriella's class!

An especially fun event this week was Miss Kim's "Mentos and Diet Cola" eruption demonstration.  Now, I didn't know this (and had to verify it on MythBusters), but adding Mentos to Diet Coke doesn't just give the soda ultra-cool problem solving skills.  It also creates this reaction:

It really was very awesome.  Afterwards, we even had eager helpers for clean-up.

Back in my classroom, we were busy building volcanoes ourselves.  Phase I of our project was creating our paper mache moutains.

Phase II was painting them.

And, phase III, the eruption of Mt. Sacred Heart.  I can do this 20 years in a row and I'll never tire of it.

The highlight of the week, though?  Despite dinosaurs and volcanoes, we were visited by a chalkboard car.  Did you know that there is nothing more fun than drawing on a car? 

And I think Ocean Beach is a better place now because of it.