Loving Nature and all it has to teach us…..

This means we enjoy nature, even on rainy days!  As many of you may have noticed, we do not let the weather keep us from learning.  Whether it is a walk to the Art Gallery like we did this week, or simply a stroll to see what we can learn, we tend to go outside during our lessons at least once a week.  Please make sure your child has rubber boots (preferred) or walking shoes, as well as a change of clothes at school.  It takes us twice as long to get ready to go outside if they are not prepared, hence, wasting quality learning time.   It is also very uncomfortable for them to be walking around the rest of the day in wet clothes, socks and shoes.  As you can see by some of our pictures below, we attempted to cover shoes with plastic bags but they rip quite easily!

  

Where in America?

We have begun testing each week on the 50 states.  The image below shows you what part of the states we are being tested on every Tuesday.  I cannot attest for the answers on the image as they are a students :o) and had not been checked yet.  We  just had our first test of the states.   I can say that we have been doing 50 states puzzles in our learning centers all year long.  They do these beautifully.  They do not recall the states on a blank map as easily.   Happy learning!

  
 

Tower Garden

On Friday all our hard work came to fruition as we were able to share and teach the kindergarten about the tower garden.  We worked in small groups and the 4th graders did a fabulous job of making a salad with Mrs. Carbetta’s class for pizza Friday.  The whole hallway and classroom smelled of fresh salad!  It was lovely.

I am especially proud of how well the 4th graders took responsibility in teaching the Kindergarten about eating healthy and how to prepare food to eat.  It was amazing to watch.  We hope that the tower will replenish itself in about 2 more weeks and we can make another salad with the other kindergarten class.

Great picking!

Leadership skills were used so well here.

Cutting the other vegetables for the salad.

Carefully picked.

The kindergarten voted that the most fun thing to do was cutting the veg!

Spinning the salad was fun.

 

 

The Earth’s Crust

We all know that the earth has four separate layers but did you know that each layer has sub-layers? Of course it was never as easy as just the 4 original layers.  The earth’s crust, which consists of many tectonic plates that are slowly moving each day, is made up of 3 layers.  They are the sedimentary layer (on top), the metamorphic layer and the igneous layer that sits against the mantle of the earth.  We used various forms of shaved chocolate to emulate these layers and how they perform.  The chocolate with almonds was the ingenious layer.  We put that in our cups first. Then we moved onto the metamorphic layer which happened to be white chocolate and Oreo. Lastly, we topped off our sedimentary layer with milk chocolate.  Using our hands (covered in plastic bags) as the earth’s gravity force, and a hair dryer as the heat from the mantle, we made our own ‘edible crust’!  We then put our warm earth crust into the fridge and talked about what happens to objects when they heat up and cool.  Our chocolate earth did just that, many of them showed signs of movement (shrinking) and some showed signs of natural phenomenon.  See for yourself in the pictures below.

  Before the fridge temperature change….
  After the temperature change….
  

Oso pardo, oso pardo….. En espanol

In Spanish today the children looked at an Eric Carle favorite.

   
   

Long division

Today we took advantage of the good weather and did our long division practice outside.  You may see the product of our hard work on the back parking lot if the rain does not come!

   
    
    
   

The Aeroponic Tower

We had a very exciting day when an Aeroponic tower was shared with our class by Mrs. Willis.  We set up our tower with the intention of providing the first ever, school-grown and harvested salad for pizza Friday!  We carefully put the tower together.  It look us all afternoon.  The next day several students stayed back with me to carefully transplant our baby seedlings to the tower in the wool pockets.  The tower is running beautifully and we are excited to see the stages of growth from the seeds as well as the seedlings.  A HUGE thank you to Mrs. Willis for allowing us to borrow this for the school year.  We love this experience!

  
  
  
  
  
  

100 years and still going strong

A few units ago, the 4th grade looked at inventions and how they have changed our world.  This week we were able to get some hands on experience of a record player that is 100 years old this year! We had to crank the handle to get it going and we listened and danced to several different types of records.  We even experimented with the speed level in order to see what effect it had on the music on each record.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful invention of Ohio with us, Jerry!

  
  
  

A walk in the woods

After doing a “see, think, wonder”, our class took a walk in the woods to see if we could dig a hole that would show us layers on the earth.  The first hole we dug was about 13″ deep and we just went past the top soil to hit a rockier layer.  Then we decided to go to another area and see if the soil changed at all.  Further into the woods we found the remains of a hole that was dug by last year’s 4th grade class.  It was holding water.  After encouraging the children to touch the soil and feel it and compare it with the soil from the last location, they deduced that the soil in the second location was clay based and therefore, held water very well.  The students had fun making some figures out of the clay and even painting their faces. 

   
    
    
    
    
   
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Clay is fun!  We covered some bark so it would dry and we could experiment what would happen when we put it in the water next time.

Our Town Meeting

The town meeting went awesome this morning!  Click on the link below to see the video.  I will attach pictures from the rest of our exciting week later this weekend!

4th grade business