The Fourth Grade Times

This month in reading, we finished The Sign of the Beaver as our Book Talk book and we are excited to start our next one! In our reading groups we already started new books last week. Instead of all the groups reading one book, each group has a different book. Mr. Patti and Ms. Search’s group are reading From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Ms. Franklin and Ms. Papini’s group are reading A Wrinkle in Time, and Ms. Picower’s group is reading The Boy Who Could Fly Without a Motor. 

As many of you know already, we finally went on our big trip to Plimoth Plantation! We were really excited to see the plantation and all of the things we had been learning about so far. We took a bus and it took 4.5 hours. We visited an english settlement with actors. Then we went to the Wampanoag settlement with real Native American people. They had a lot of animal skins and we got to sit with them and learn more about their culture. Then we took a bus to the Plimoth Sands Motel. We had some down time in our room that we really enjoyed and we then we had a pizza party. After, we went to bed. The next day we had breakfast at the hotel and then went to see the Mayflower II and Plimoth Rock. We also went to a grist mill and met the miller there. He showed us how to mill corn and he was really cool! Since we got back from the trip we have been making a mural in the class that shows all the differences between the Settlers and the Native Americans. We loved social studies this month!

In art this month we are taking photos and transforming them on white paper. To do this, we add other things to the picture that would and could have been there already. We all really like transforming the pictures because its really fun to add different things and use our creativity. Another thing we did was bend and cut paper into different shapes. Some people made faces, too. People made loops, mountains, houses, towers, and much more. In one half group, they made a 36 inch tower out of one twelve inch peice of paper! It was so cool! Art is one of our favorite periods.

This month in music we have been reviewing a lot of the songs we learned a few weeks ago so we can do them really well. We can definitely tell that we are getting better since we first started! It was hard at first, but we have improved a lot! We also learned some new songs like Jingle Bells  and Little Dreidle. We like playing holiday songs. In the beginning of recorder class Ms. Heidt makes us echoe what she is playing. Sometimes she sings and we have to echoe her, too. We learned a lot in recorder this month!