What a Week!

After Tie Dye Tuesday, we continued to have a fabulous week!  

In Math, we finished studying angles, and took our test on them.  We will continue to look at angles through our line design lessons, and we will even get to sew a line design as the year wraps up.

In Science we started to learn about magnetism and electricity. We have done some reading in our science books, and will begin to do some experiments next week.  At the end of this unit, we will even get the chance to make a flashlight.

On Monday we will see Mrs. Silvia of the Haffenreffer Museum for our last visit.  She will help to kick off our study of the Southwest with a presentation on the Hopi.  She has been a wonderful addition to our Kennedy curriculum, and we have learned so much from her! Thanks to the PCC for this awesome opportunity!

We finished reading Charlotte's Web this week!  We enjoyed reading this book using the Reader's Theater model. We all were impressed with Michael and Holly, who really, really brought us into the book with their awesome expression!  The children really loved reading this way.  Though the ending was sad (and Mrs. Merten cried, again) we enjoyed this book, and learned so much!  We even got to watch the movie and compare it to the book. EVERYONE agreed, the book was so much better!

Thank you to Mrs. Williams for recording parts of our chorus show on Thursday!  The puppets are amazing and the performance was fabulous!  We are very lucky here at JFK to have two amazing teachers ~ Mrs. Hess (who made the puppets with the children in art) and Mrs. MacMurray!  Mrs. Mac has a music blog which  you can check out here.

Here are some videos from the show (the puppets singing are Mrs. Merten's favorite).

Our Week In Review

We had a fun week in Room 24.  Our student teacher, Miss Boulay, began in our class on Tuesday.  She will be with us every day until the middle of May.  Miss Boulay spent the week getting to know our routines, and the children. She even started to work on our Interactive Read Aloud, by reading a chapter in our newest book, Snow Treasure.

In math, we have been working on learning about fractions.  This can be challenging, but we are doing a great job!  We have our fractions test this Thursday.  Mrs. Merten will send home the study guide on Monday, but if you want a preview, there is a link to it on the right. We also made a chart including some of the fraction rules we have learned.  Here it is!

In science, we took our first Weather "Quest".  Mrs. Merten will correct these over the weekend and will have them on Monday.  Next week, we will begin our study of the Regions of the US.  We will start with an overview, and then begin our "Journey Across the US" by learning about the Northeast.

In writing, we have gotten well into our unit on essays and are excited to start to write some of our own.  In poetry workshop we learned about Robert Frost and even got to listen to a recording of him reading "The Road Not Taken."  It was very cool.  We continued working on Power Point presentations in Technology workshop.  

Mrs. Williams lead us in some Yoga to celebrate National Yoga Recess day on Friday.  Click here to check out her yoga blog, and see a picture of all of the fourth graders in our yoga pose!

On Monday, our anthropologist in residence, Mrs. Silvia from the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University,  will return for our second presentation about Native Americans. We will learn about the Inuit.  We are grateful to the PCC for funding this awesome opportunity!

We are making great progress with Recorder Karate.  Mrs. Merten said she would play her own recorder if we all make Black Belt, so keep working at it!  Check out Mrs. MacMurray's Music blog.

On Tuesday, before Sports Day, we were lucky enough to have Mrs. Silvia back to Kennedy School.  She works for The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University.  Mrs. Silvia came to talk about the Plains Indians.  The Plains Indians are the Native Americans we usually imagine when thinking about Native Americans.  They wore headdresses with feathers, rode horses, and hunted with a bow and arrow.  We are thankful to the PCC for funding this program. We learned so much!

Here is Collin with a bow.  Arrows were made from bones from animals.

Here's Collin hiding under a wolf skin. This is how the Plains Indians were able to sneak up on their main prey ~ the buffalo. There were few trees in this area to hide behind.

It takes about 10 buffalo hides to make a teepee.

This was hung outside your home (a teepee) to let people know you were home.  Those are eagle feathers!

This is a buffalo skull.  The Plains Indians used many parts of the skull in everyday life.

Here we are creating a type of trail mix/granola.  The women of the Plains Tribes had to grind up items such as nuts, seeds and dried fruits to make this.  We used a rock and a hollowed out rock to make this.  It was hard work!

Hayden is wearing a headdress.   Each feather represents an act of bravery.

This is a porcupine hide.  There were many uses for the porcupine's quills.