The Fourth Grade Times

In Social Studies before the break, we finished up learning about the 13 Colonies. One of our final activities was Skittles for the King. We each got a certain amount of Skittles and they stood for our income. Then, the tax collectors came around and took a certain fraction of our money, and gave it to the King. Eventually, we had no money left and it showed us how the colonists felt when they got their money taken away in taxes.

Our teachers told us that over break we should think about a freedom fighter we would like to study. When we got back from break, we were told to narrow down our list to three freedom fighters that we were excited about studying. Then we got together with a teacher and chose which freedom fighter was right for us.  

This month in computer, we did typing games online. WE also played Four in a Row, which is a geometry game. We were given a coordinate point and we had to put it where it was supposed to go. We also played a 50 United States game where we dragged states into a blank map of North America. We also did a 13 Colonies quiz on brainpop.com.

We learned the note D in music. Before we went on break, we were given the songs, “Jingle Bells” and “I Had a Little Dreidel” to practice. We were then tested on how well we knew them. Then after the break, we reviewed the songs. We then played with Watermelon Man and Ms. Heydt gave us “When the Saints Go Marching In” to learn. Please help remind us that we need to be practicing our recorders every day for at least a few minutes! Thanks!

We are trying to make circles out of square grid paper. On our first day back in Art, we did puzzles that they did in the Navy. We had to match the puzzles. In our next class, we turned off the lights and we put on our blindfolds. We were sculpting and we had to try to not think of what we were making. We also did not know who we were working with. It felt weird to not know who you were working with or what you were doing, but our sculptures were pretty cool!

We learned double-digit by double-digit multiplication, using the standard algorithm. That’s the way our parents and teachers learned how to multiply, but we got there by learning different steps, like the Box Method, the FOIL Method, and the Four Subproblem Method. Starting as soon as we got back to school after the break, we started geometry, speficially polygons. A polygon is a shape with no rounded sides, all the sides have to connect, and there can’t be a line through the shape. We are also learning a lot of fancy polygon words like isosceles, equilateral, scalene, and quadrilateral.

We learned double-digit by double-digit multiplication, using the standard algorithm. That’s the way our parents and teachers learned how to multiply, but we got there by learning different steps, like the Box Method, the FOIL Method, and the Four Subproblem Method. Starting as soon as we got back to school after the break, we started geometry, speficially polygons. A polygon is a shape with no rounded sides, all the sides have to connect, and there can’t be a line through the shape. We are also learning a lot of fancy polygon words like isosceles, equilateral, scalene, and quadrilateral.

We are still working on our reading group books. Ms. Search and Mr. Patti’s reading groups are reading From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Ms. Papini and Ms. Franklin’s groups are reading A Wrinkle in Time, and Ms. Picower’s groups are reading The Boy Who Could Fly Without a Motor. We are learning new vocabulary words from these books–ask us about them! We also finished our latest Book Talk book, George Washington’s Socks. We are now starting a new one, Run Away Home.