Welcome back! We were so happy to be back together this week. Before break, we chose the National Parks we wanted to research for the International Festival. This week, we began our research for the Festival on Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Crater Lake National Parks. Our students have research questions to answer about the formation of their park, the landforms inside their park, the flora and fauna, and many more topics! The students are also choosing how they will present their information and writing a script for that presentation. Look for an email this weekend about all the costume details and your child’s script!
Our second year students are finishing up their study of polygons as a group of shapes before moving into studying each family of polygons. So far, our students have discussed which polygons are builders and constructors, the parts of a polygon, and regular and irregular polygons. To show what they have learned, the students are building different regular and irregular polygons from straws and strings. Your student will be bringing these home to share with you!Our first graders have completed their study of lines and are now studying angles. Our first lesson was about whole and straight angles. In this lesson, a first year student is sharing with our visiting kindergarten child how to write a definition into your own words. It’s so wonderful when students can share their knowledge with peers, especially when we can involve different subject areas into one lesson!Our tank for the hydroponic system is up and running! After a leaky tank and a three-day long search for local, aquatic snails, we are ready to plant our seeds. Our seeds have been germinating and have now sprouted enough to be placed into our hydroponic system. One of our students involved in planning this project, a third grader, is connecting tubing and bubblers to each tier of our system. This will ensure that the water that is nurturing our plants has enough oxygen. Once everything is in our system, students will need to consistently check and adjust the pH levels in our tank to make sure the fish stay healthy and the plants keep growing. We also have a three-way breeder to keep our baby guppies safe! Stop by next week to see our system!
“A Peek at Next Week”
Next week, we will continue our research for the International Festival and will begin practicing with our scripts. Please take time to practice lines with your student! First year students will continue work with the Decanomial, will discuss echinoderms, and will continue learning about angles. Second year students will discuss prime numbers, commas, and triangles. Third year students will begin multiplying fractions, will learn more about mollusks, and will find the formula for volume! Our fourth year students will review multiplying binomials and trinomials and will continue studying bacteria by building models of different bacterial shapes, discussing antibiotics, and will learn about bacteria on every day objects.
REMINDERS:
Wednesday, April 18 – International Festival Rehearsal 6:00-7:30
Friday, April 20 – Early Dismissal – All students must be picked up at noon. There is NO After Care this day.
Friday, April 20 – International Festival – 5:30-8:30
