Share centers

Hello,

I hit up the Auburn share center on Saturday and then grabbed some more stuff at the Topsham share center today after school.  These are buildings that have donated items for teachers to use in their classrooms.  They kind of look like junky indoor yard sales, but spools, string, straws, wood scraps, dowels, and plastic doo dads really come in handy for a unit on simple machines.  Thank you to the parent group for paying for us to have access to these centers. 

We can never have enough options of materials for the kids to build with, so feel free to donate anything that could be used in a display of simple machines at work: wedges, pulleys, screws, nails, scrap wood, tubes, spools, yarn etc.  My real need right now is more masking tape.  We will go through that quickly during this unit. 

Today, we experienced the power of friction when combined with lots of surface area.  The kids tried to pry two phone books apart.  The phone books had their pages intertwined.  The pages actually are wedged together.  There is a good Mythbusters where they actually use tanks to try to pry them apart.  We watched a two minute clip of that episode today.

My math class is taking on to long division better than any class that I can remember.  Nice work.  Those struggling with multiplication facts are having the most trouble coming up with right answers, but I can see that they have the concept down. 

Tomorrow is a Hawaiian themed dress up day.  I know I don't own a Hawaiian shirt.  Maybe I can scrounge up a flowery tie. 

Have a great night,

Mr. Shea