God’s Love
We learned about God’s love for us. We studied the four different Greek words for love. We learned that God has unconditional love for us.
Mr. Lopez
Great Expectaions
We learned about Gods purpose for our lives and finding it in the midst of seeking Him with all our hearts! When we make God our greatest expectation He will always exceed our greatest expectations.
Mr. Lopez
Spring Celebration
I am really proud of these students. When they started, they didn’t think they could dance. After faithfully coming to practice on time, warming up and working hard, they really learned a lot. They even went shopping for their costumes. For the Spring Celebration, they danced to I Want To Be Right There and did a great job.
Mrs. Rosario
Inertia
However, an object in motion will stay in motion – that is the law. Newton’s First Law, to be exact. Sixth grade is continuing to learn about physics and the concept of inertia. Inertia is the tendency of an object to stay in motion, or, if it was at rest, to stay at rest. Scientists of Sir Isaac Newton’s time were incorrect in their assumptions about motion. They thought it required constant force to keep something moving. It’s really that other variables come into play: gravity, friction, an object in the way, and so forth. An object’s direction or speed will only change if something acts upon it; that’s Newton’s Second Law. Interestingly, Newton may not have made his many discoveries about math and motion if he had not been escaping the break-out of a plague at his university. And what if that killer apple had never fallen on his head? That’s what got the ball rolling… so to speak.
Miss Kleinschuster
NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT FAST? GO TO THE MOON
Sixth grade has learned why you weigh less on the Moon – and why you weigh more on Jupiter: gravity. It’s not your body that changes (that’s your mass); it’s the strength of what’s keeping you on the surface. In fact, if you climbed a mountain, you would weigh less even on Earth, because the top of the mountain is farther away from the center of the planet’s gravity.
Did you know that if you drop a feather and a hammer at the same time on the Moon, they will hit the surface at the same time? Sixth grade knows! They learned that since there is no air there, there’s nothing to make the feather float. That experiment couldn’t be performed effectively on Earth until anti-gravity chambers were invented, but Galileo Galilei, an Italian scientist from the 16th Century, did some of the initial tests to theorize that all objects fall in the same rate in a vacuum.
Miss Kleinschuster
FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET
But what is speed? It’s not just how fast you go, it’s how fast you go over a certain amount of time. As the academic year speeds toward its end, sixth grade is beginning their unit on physics. Maybe this news letter should go under the math heading!
Did you know that going too fast can affecting your heart and breathing rate? That’s why racecar drivers are more physically fit than you might expect. They might be sitting, but the effects of driving hundreds of miles an hour (depending on the type of car) have a great physical impact. (Let alone if the car crashes; now THAT’S a great physical impact.)
Miss Kleinschuster
GIVE PEAS A CHANCE
As spring rolled around, sixth grade learned how the Father of Modern Genetics, Gregor Mendel, a 19th Century German monk, studied pea plants to learn about laws of heredity. His observations led to the discovery of dominant and recessive traits – traits which help us determine where the color of our eyes or hair, our blood types, and even certain inherited diseases come from.
Miss Kleinschuster
IT TAKES TWO… DOESN’T IT?
All species are driven to create more of their own kind… but there’s no such thing as Mommy & Daddy Amoeba. Students learned how different organisms reproduce. Single-celled organisms can divide into two, some simple animals can grow from a bump on the single parent’s body, and many plants can create clones of themselves. Contrast this asexual reproduction with sexual reproduction: it takes a lot less time, but there is no genetic variation. Mixing genes up makes things a lot more interesting – otherwise we would all be absolutely identical to Adam – and there wouldn’t even be an Eve!
Miss Kleinschuster
WINTER WARMING?!
Earth is a cool place to be… until you start digging deeper. This month sixth grade learned about the Earth’s layers, from core to crust, and the magma that can be stirred up beneath the Earth’s surface. When there’s too much tectonic activity, things start heating up! Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur due to moving plates.
Did you know that a single volcanic eruption can affect the entire globe? When Mt. Pinatubo (in the Philippines) erupted in 1991, debris such as dust, gas and ash traveled to the atmosphere and spread around the world, affecting the global climate.
Miss Kleinschuster
C. S. Lewis
Students entered the classic, C.S. Lewis-created world of Narnia as they read the final book of the series, The Last Battle. They enjoyed the fantasy elements as well as the Christian symbolism. Also, students read the amazing story of Amos Fortune: Free Man, a man who spent most of his life enslaved and worked to obtain the freedom of many others.
Mrs. Foster