What a Week!

It is usually tough to get back into the swing of things after a vacation, but it wasn't true this week!  The children returned to school recharged and ready for the last part of our year.  

On Monday, we were joined again by Mrs. Silvia of the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University.  As our "Anthropologist in Residence" she has shown us Native Americans from three parts of the country.  In June, she will return to share her knowledge and artifacts from the Sioux.  

This week, Mrs. Silvia discussed the Natives from the "Plains" region. The tribes are numerous, but they all have their location in common.  These tribes can be found in the midwest region of our country.  We learned about the homes, clothing and even the responsibilities of this region, and we even saw some slides of native people of this region living on reservations today.  Below are some pictures of our experience.

That's David under that wolf skin.  Natives would sneak up on the buffalo by hiding under an animal skin.  

Mrs. Silvia is explaining the uses of deer and buffalo hooves.

Mrs. Sivia is showing us that a buffalo skull can be used for many things.

Ethan is wearing a traditional headdress. Each feather would be earned after completing a task that shows bravery.  This person must've been very brave!

Here is Luke, demonstrating that it isn't easy to carry all of the items (shield, bow, arrow) that you would need when hunting.

This diagram shows all of the ways that the Native Americans found to use buffalo.

This is a calendar from the Native tribe.  People would draw important events from the year on this hide, and at the end of the year, this was a keepsake of the year's events.

Imagine wearing this dress?  It was really heavy!

These are some of the clothes that could be worn at a Pow Wow.

In Social Studies this week, Miss Boulay taught us about Talking Sticks.  We talked about the Objiwa tribe, and how talking sticks are used in this tribe.  In meetings and in some schools, the person who is talking must be holding the stick, and they are the only one who is talking.  We used felt instead of fur, and different colored beads and feathers to make our own talking sticks.  Each bead color symbolized something different, and we chose our beads based on what was most important to us. Here we are with our finished projects!

On Thursday, we were so lucky to have Ms. Ruby Bridges come to our school! She gave a wonderful presentation about her part in history, and about accepting each other.   We are grateful to so many people who helped to make this happen, including the Kennedy PCC, the Franklin Cultural Council, and Mrs. Sabolinski, our superintendent. Each child in our class received a personalized autographed copy of Ruby's book, Through My Eyes.  If you don't know about Ms. Bridges, you can find out more here. 

Here is a picture of Ruby when she was 6 years old, and another with our entire fourth grade.  

Today was Boston Pride Day at Kennedy.  We all wore our Boston shirts, or Red, White and Blue.  As a school we had an optional collection for the 1FUND, to benefit the people impacted by the Boston Marathon.  Our school collected $1085, which will be sent directly to the fund.  Way to Go, JFK!

Here we are in our Boston shirts ~

Rock Poetry

We had a day filled with MUSIC!  It was a fun Creative Arts Friday!

We took pictures of everyone presenting their project ~ Since students needed to use their notes, you may not see eye contact!

What an eclectic group of songs our students chose for their Rock Poetry Projects!  Below is a list of our song choices~

• Firework
• Centerfield
• If I Had A Million Dollars
• Eye of the Tiger
• My Wish
• Don't Rain on My Parade
• Payphone
• Cat's In the Cradle
• I Saw God Today
• Puff the Magic Dragon
• We Are Never Getting Back Together
• Watch Me
• I Carly Theme Song
• You've Got a Friend In Me
• Home
• Summer Song
• It's My Life
• Pray
• Waitin' on a Sunny Day

We also used the points we earned from our specialists for Crazy Hair/Hat day.  Here we are in our crazy hair!

Have a wonderful vacation!!!!

Our Week in Review

This was a busy week in room 24!  We began the week with our Reading portion of the MCAS.  Mrs. Merten was very proud of us!  We all arrived to school on time, and worked hard!  There is no more MCAS testing until the math portion in May.

In Reading, Miss Boulay began reading Love that Dog, by Sharon Creech with our class.  We loved learning about Jack and how he grew to LOVE poetry.  We'll be reading Hate that Cat, the sequel, also by Sharon Creech next week, and will be writing some poetry inspired by some of the poets in these books.  While reading these books, we were able to watch the main characters, Jack and Miss Stretchberry, change.  We discussed how the characters changed throughout the school year, and the reasons we thought they were changing.  

In Math, we have been working on elapsed time ~ how to determine how much time has passed for a given event.  We have discussed ways to solve these problems, including creating a number line.  If you notice your child using a number line while working on these types of problems, that is what we've done here at school!  Today we worked in centers to solve real world problems about the passing of time.  These are a challenge, but the children are doing a great job with them.  We will have an assessment of this topic, with a review of graphing, toward the end of next week (tentatively scheduled for Thursday).

We have continued on our trip throughout the US with the study of the Midwest.  We will be learning about the geography/climate of this region, along with important people, natural resources, and Native Americans.  We also expect a visit from Mrs. Silvia, our anthropologist in residence from the Haffenreffer Museum, after vacation.

In Science, we continue to study the weather.  We will begin learning about WILD WEATHER next week.  This topic seems to be the most exciting for the children. We will use what we've learned throughout this unit to learn about hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, and thunder storms.