Classifying by Kingdoms, an Essay by Mrs. Bailey's Class

This week we finished our second whole class essay. We decided to connect our Science curriculum with our writing. What do you notice about the essay format?
What did you find interesting about classifying living things? Do you know any additional information about this topic? We'd love to learn more!



Classifying living things into kingdoms

Do you want to learn about classifying living things into kingdoms? You do not have to be a scientist to classify. You have to observe the different characteristics. After we observe the characteristics, you place them into one of the three following kingdoms: animal kingdom, fungi kingdom, or plant kingdom.
Animal kingdom is one way we can classify living things into a kingdom. One way to to classify animals is if they have a backbone or not. Foe example, a wolf has a backbone, and a slug does not have a backbone. Some animals are warm blooded and some animals are cold blooded. For example a dog is warm blooded, and snakes are cold blooded. Those are examples of ways to classify the animal kingdom.
The next kingdom we can classify using characteristics is the fungi kingdom. Fungus is a decomposer. A decomposer feeds on rotting things. Fungus grows best in the dark. We learned this from growing our own mold in the classroom. We can also eat certain kinds of fungus. For example, we can eat mushrooms, which are fungus. Fungi can travel as spores and can attach to the rotting material.
Our last kingdom to classify is the plant kingdom. We can classify plants by their roots. For example a carrot has a taproot and a flower has a fibrous root. We can also classify plants by their leaves. Leaves can be classified by size, color, shape, and texture.
As you can see there are many ways to classify living things into kingdoms. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to classify them. Classifying living things helps scientists organize the kingdoms!

Extra Credit and Rice!

Room 205 recently read a book entitled Everybody Cooks Rice by Norah Dooley.

In the story, a brother and sister go around from house to house in their neighborhood and sample all kinds of rice. As they go to each house, they realize that Everybody Cooks Rice.

As we made connections to this story, we realized that our classmates also have a number of ways their families cook rice. How does your family cook rice?

If you would like to share your family tradition with our class, please feel free to bring in just enough rice for each student to have one taste. We would love to expand our horizons and learn more about the diverse cultural traditions within our classroom community!

Mourning the Loss of a Loved One

We are currently reading Taste of Blackberries by Doris Buchanan Smith. In this story a boy deals with the pain of losing his best friend Jamie. Jamie dies while taunting bees in their hive, not knowing that he is deathly allergic to them. Losing a best friend is not easy, and Jamie's best friend mourns the loss of his friend in many ways. Here are some of the ways we found he deals with his grief:

• remembers good times had with Jamie
• thinks of the future without Jamie
• pictures Jamie in a better place
• goes to Jamie's funeral
• doesn't sleep or eat
• denies the reality that Jamie is gone
• asks questions about what happened to Jamie

Today in class we realized that losing Jamie was so difficult for his friend because of how close their friendship was while he was still alive. Many of us have lost someone or something special to us too, and we realized that having special people in our lives means that we will at some point deal with loss. Do you have any ideas or suggestions about what to do when you lose someone or something special? Did you react like Jamie or did you mourn in other ways?