What's up at Poetry club?

This week, we looked at poetry by Gary Soto which talks about his neighborhood. We started by choosing a favorite place and drawing it so we'd be ready to describe it in our poems.

We talked about how you choose your favorite place and how you visualize it, as well as what form the poem might take. We're not done yet, so we'll post them next week.

Last week, at WPK's birthday party, we gave our friends and neighbors our first book of poems, which were about our library. We'll work on getting those posted, too.

300 Cupcakes and Why They Lead To Math

It's shocking but true!!!

Washington Park Library will be hosting the

one-time only 300 Cupcake Event! Will they be beautiful and delicious? Yes. Will poetry or stories be read while others have their mouths full of cupcake? Yes. And who is making and giving us beautiful cupcakes because they can? The fabulous people of Johnson and Wales! Thank you, beautiful bakers!

Here is what's still unknown: what do 300 cupcakes look like?

Because Muktar was working on mixed fractions, which meant we had to talk about math, we started talking about how you can check your math homework by estimating whether your answer was right. And at the same time I was so thinking about our cupcake future. So let's estimate with cupcakes and start looking at estimation.

Start with one beautiful cupcake- then imagine 2- then imagine rows of 2 by 2 by 2 by 2 by 2, rows that are 8 cupcakes across.

Then, imagine you've got those rows that have 8 across, and they're 4 of them. If you can picture the way that looks, that's 8 times 4, which is 32. Now you need almost 10 of that amount, because 10 times 32 is 320. So get rid of some rows, because your estimate is too high. But you're in the zone.

Check out the book Greater Estimations, by Bruce Goldstone- someone from ASF Broad has it right now, but it has pictures that completely explain how to use visual ideas to estimate.