We started the year reviewing subtraction with regrouping. Then we moved on to area and perimeter! We measured the area and perimeter of our feet, and we arranged chairs after reading Spaghetti and Meatballs for All. Now we are learning about multiplication. We are making sure we know all of our math facts so that we can move on to double-digit multiplication. We can’t wait!
In morning meeting, we sit on the rug, greet each other, and do activities. We had different jobs that we do, and sometimes, we play games together. We also share about what’s going on in our lives outside of school. A few days a week, we sing a song that we get to choose. It’s a lot of fun!
In community service, we visited Atria, which is a home for elderly people. We played bingo with them. It was really fun!
Next, we learned about UNICEF by watching a movie and hearing a visitor from UNICEF speak to us. We then handed out UNICEF boxes to the kindergarten, first, and third grade classes and talked about how important it was to collect money for kids who need it. Then, we trick-or-treated for UNICEF! Now, we are in charge of collecting the boxes that kids bring to school.
In social studies, we have been learning about Jamestown. It is an old forgotten colony. What we have done so far is “A Captain’s Decision,” where we decided on where we would settle on a map, based on what we knew about the land and who would be in the settlement. We watched a movie called “Secrets of the Dead.” It was a movie that told us about the archaelogical digs going on there and the artifacts they are finding at Jamestown in Virginia. We did a virtual voyage from England to Jamestown in Computer.
Now we are learning about Plimoth. We have done a reading where we had to answer questions about the Pilgrims and the Powhatan Indians. We highlighted and underlined the answers we found. We also watched the “Voyage on the Mayflower” and learned about the inside of the ship. We also did skits on groups of Pilgrims and Powhatans meeting each other for the first time and thought about the customs they would share, and the misunderstandings that would happen. We are getting ready for our trip to Plimoth, which is November 15-16.
Our Art teacher is Mr. Jelinek. He’s really funny! We worked on Six Portraits. The Six Portraits is when you make six panels on a big sheet of paper and each portrait has a different material. The last panel is every material you used combined. The materials we used were pencil, marker, collage, watercolor, oil pastel and then, we combined the materials. It was really fun!
Now, we are working with marker and foam pieces. We made portraits of something of your choice out of foam and marker. We had to try to make it look like we were only using one material. It is fun because when you do it, you can make it anything you want!
In science, we started out by learning about mining with renewable and nonrenewable resources. One of them is called fossil fuels. We started off with nonrenewable resources. We had partners and we had five tries. We were assigned a kind of pasta and you could not get any other pasta. That pasta was our resource. Our charts were of how many pastas you could mine in ten seconds. Then we did nonrenewable resources and our charts mostly stayed the same. Sometimes, they would go up. We guessed that renewable resources were better and we were right! It also mattered what pasta we were assigned.
Next, we started learning about landforms. So, to measure the steepness of a mountain, scientists use lines. For example, Mount Everest is 29,000 feet tall. If each line is 1,000 feet, then the closer the lines, the stepper that part of the mountain. To test what we we learned, we used play-doh in a container and we had a map. We had to make Landform A, which had 6 lines. Each line was a centimeter long. Then we poured a cup of water into the container. We observed how the landform was before and after the water.
Now, we are learning about pollution. We made pollution catchers and we are finding out what kind of pollution is in the air we breathe.