The kids truly enjoyed painting the pumpkins Teal and taking part in the TEAL Pumpkin project. It's for such a great cause to raise awareness, and I don't think it could have been more successful. Thank you, Gina for coming in to help and providing all of the materials!!
This Halloween, we are lucky enough to take part in a non-traditional (hoping to make it traditional) Halloween Fun Activity to help raise awareness about food-allergies. It's hard to believe when your child doesn't have food allergies, but children with food allergies truly have a reason to be scared on Halloween. A very helpful parent will be coming into our class on Thursday, providing pumpkins for each student to paint. She is also bringing in some non-food treats to have on hand Halloween night in case someone does come trick-or-treating to your house that has a food allergy. These teal pumpkins are also a way to raise awareness in your neighborhood about food allergies! Here is link to a very informational blog about the TEAL Pumpkin Project.
Hi Parents!
Just a few reminders of upcoming events. Sunday, October 26-Wednesday, October 29 AISNE will be here visiting at school. We will be going through our ten year accreditation during those 4 days. Starting on Thursday, October 30, we will begin our first of two trips to the Chatham Upweller facility. The fourth grade, along with third grade, are currently studying food chains, habitats, structures of life, systems in vertebrate and invertebrate bodies, and how changes in the weather affect the earth. We will be using our knowledge, and learning when visiting the facility. These visits will enable the students to learn about the quahogs, razor clams, and bay scallops that will soon be put into the ocean in Chatham. The students will be able to collect data, and create a diagrams based on their observations at the facility. It should be an exciting, hands on experience for Cape Cod's Classroom. The trip is only one hour long, 8:30-9:30. We will be leaving school at 8:15, so please make sure that the students are dropped off no later than 8:10. Thank-you! On Friday, October 31st, the students Mystery Book Reports are due. We will also be having a small Halloween celebration that day. The students are allowed to wear their costumes to school, but nothing violent please (: There will be a Halloween Parade that you are all invited to in the front circle at 9:15am. We will also have a sign-up in the Elementary Hallway for some donations for the party. We play "wrap the mummy" (wrap the teacher in toilet paper), freeze dance, have a donut eating contest, and enjoy some fun treats. Please make sure that you check out the sign-up board if you would like to donate anything. As always, please reach out to me with any questions, or concerns. Best Regards, Mrs. Z In the recent days, we have been learning about different multiplication strategies to solve equations, facts, and word problems. The 4 that we have really been diving into are arrays, fact families, repeated addition, and groups of equal numbers. On Friday we took the students took what they have learned, and applied it to the students teaching the students. Below you can see pictures of the students teaming up to teach one of the strategies. They used the board to show examples, and also used their multiplication lap books as supplemental materials. We have been putting together multiplication lap books recently and they are truly a great hands on tool for the students, struggling or mastering the skill. Here you can find some more tricks and tools for solving multiplication strategies, and play some games while learning them.
On Thursday when it was supposed to rain, but only did late in the afternoon, I had planned to get kids moving inside somehow. They have been BEGGING me to have another go at their team building yoga mat game ever since they attempted it last week. So I thought, what better time then now. Anyway- I gave them only a half hour this time, they attempted it 4 times total, and THEY WON! They finished with time to spare. The perfect amount for us to debrief about the entire experience. It was such a great moment when all of the students realize they each have very similar "highs and lows", "what worked, what didn't work", and "what they liked best, what they didn't like". It's amazing how more aware of the "team", and less concerned about themselves, they were the second time around. It's also so great seeing them truly work together, come together as a class, and see the leaders making sure each student had a chance to get around. Overall, a success! I am so very proud of them. Below are some pictures from the beginning, to the "jumping up and down because they finished" end. Good Morning,
I just wanted to remind everyone that the permission slips for the Plimoth Plantation are due by Friday. I have only received two- so please make sure that you get those in. Also- I am sending home a fiddle rental agreement that needs to be filled out, signed, and returned. If those can come back asap- the Fiddle Company that we rent from are waiting for these. Thanks so much, Mrs. Z. In science we have been learning all about bones, the skeleton, and our bodies. The students learned about each bone in our body, what each one does, created skeletons, and started focusing on bone shape and density. On Friday we did an experient on bone shape. The students created square tubes, and round tubes out of construction paper. These tubes were the representation of bones. They started stacking books on top of each tube, seeing which tube was the strongest, and held the most weight. They made predictions before hand, hypothesizing that the square tubes would be the strongest. At the end, the students were able to come to a conclusion that the round tube, in fact, was the strongest. We then talked about the correlation between these, and bones. What a great lesson to show the strength and density of bones. FUN, TOO! With a rainy Wednesday, and an hour's time for P.L.U.S.- a team building game could not have been more perfect this week. The kids were given yoga mats- one for each of them and one extra one. We had a warm up discussion before they began. We talked about what it involves to work as a team, talked about how everyone should be included, that they should listen to everyone's ideas before deciding on a plan, and how it's okay to fail a couple times- as long as you try. The students had to use the yoga mats to get around the perimeter of the room, always making sure that one foot was always on each yoga mat. They weren't allowed to step off, and couldn't use their hands to crawl. The first several times they got about 3 yoga mats out and had to go back. They finally figured out the best strategy for them- and then got about 1/2 of the way around before they mistakenly stepped off the mat. It was totally okay, they accepted the mistake and started again. After a couple more go's at it, I gave them a 2 minute warning, and then ended the activity. Even though they didn't get around the room, they did work FANTASTICALLY together. We had a cool down discussion, and debriefed about how well the activity went. Each student shared their highs and lows, and talked about what worked and didn't work. Overall, it was a HUGE success, and I cannot wait for our next team building activity. Go Fourth Graders!!! |
Ryann Zabielski
Elementary Director Archives
May 2015
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