The ninth grade Global classes just began a chapter on the Americas. The students discovered how the ancient Americans traveled over the Bering Strait in the Ice Age in search of food and populated North and South America. We have gone over both the Mayan and Aztec cultures and next we will discuss the Ancient Incan civilization. The students have shown interest in this topic because of movies and cartoons, as well some of the students have traveled to some of these countries and have explained what these giant pyramid structures looked like.
Mr. Fowler
100 Hungry Ants is one of the topics we’re doing in math. The book One Hundred Hungry Ants by Elinor Pinczes was quite humorous in that the 100 ants were traveling to go on a picnic and they were really hungry. As the 100 ants traveled they split up into equal groups of 10’s and groups of 4’s and this had our second Graders thinking………??!!! Not only did they get to laugh as the hungry tummies went by “a hi and a hi dee hoo!” but they got an opportunity to use unifix cubes to actually work out how many groups of 10’s there were in 100 and other related groups. What was very interesting was when we brain stormed about the topic Ants as to the information we already knew; a few children related the ants to our class. Some said they are a team working together to get their food, just like 2B is working together in our class. While others said it was important for each ant to cooperate and walk-in straight lines, when they tried to get their food. They saw that second graders needed to learn lessons from the Hungry Ants. They knew almost immediately that the hungry ants made more than one line because they wanted to get to the picnic faster. It was really a fun project as the kids got to make up problems from what they observed and show how they came up with their answer. It was amazing when a particular student said we all need to follow a leader and each group of ants had a line leader just as we second graders need to follow our teachers and God.
Mrs. Boodram
In Science we’ve been learning about the Life cycle of plants. We’ve explored the term Pollination and Germination and our second graders were quite intrigued because they now understood that the dust-like material found in the center of a flower is called “pollen”. Most thought it was just dust, but we found out that birds take this pollen from one plant to the other. We also learned that there are many ways for seeds to travel depending on their weight! When we blew like the wind, the milk seed started to spin around before it fell to the ground and this caused so much excitement. The name “cocklebur”, sounded funny to our second graders and they laughed hysterically when we read that these seeds “hitch a ride” on animals i.e. they stick unto their fur, skin as they travel from one place to another. When I threw the cocklebur seed on my sweater, it didn’t fall off, but it stuck unto me. We had so much fun!
Mrs. Boodram
As we continued to explore patterns, shapes and arrays, our 2nd Graders made our very own paper quilt. Each child received a 4 by 4 block of paper and also different colors of smaller squares where they had to cut the squares to make triangles and rectangles and fit them in a pattern. Then we had to figure out how to equally divide the blocks and make a quilt. It was a bit challenging because a lot of the 2nd Graders made 3 groups of 7, but then we were left with one lonely block of paper. We know that quilts are usually even; so then we decided the only way for this to work was to have a 2 by 11 array. Our quilt hangs outside our door and we are proud of it!
Mrs. Boodram
During our reading class, Second Grade had the opportunity to read The Best Vacation Ever by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith. We were surprised because instead of reading a story in paragraph form, we found letters that Amanda wrote to her friend Josie. As we read the letters we felt as though we were visiting the places with Amanda, especially when she visited The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee the home of country music. We were able to find the places she visited on the map of the Unites States! Later Second Grade had fun writing letters to their friends.
Mrs. Boodram
We went on a journey to Spain as Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand financed Christopher Columbus’s trip to find the new World. We looked at a clipping on Brain Pop Jr. and this was so exciting.
Mrs. Boodram
This week during Bible time we decided to make a special prayer box for our class. Our prayer requests have been increasing daily and now each child has the opportunity to write a prayer request on a sheet of paper, fold it up, and put it in our prayer box. Daily the children pray for their loved ones as we stretch forth our hands and ask God to answer our prayers. This has become an important part of our day as we give our days to the Lord. We’re expecting miracles!
Mrs. Boodram
Number Corner. We started counting by 2’s and Second Grade choose the theme “eyes ” to represent them on our Chart of 2’s. We all got to draw and decorate our own unique faces with two eyes and we made a chart counting by 2’s. This has become a part of our Number Corner wall as we count on by 2’s.
Mrs. Boodram
5E will continue to borrow two books each week. They will borrow one nonfiction so they can learn new information about a topic they are interested in and the second book will be one of their choosing. We will also be working on identifying the parts of a book. They will be introduced to the Dewey Decimal System of classification so that when they need to find a book it will be easy for them to locate it. We will also be talking about God’s mercies, which are new everyday. We will be praying to the Lord that he may give us a thankful heart.
Mrs. Ruiz
The fourth grade picked the theme of animals. They will be borrowing a weekly book about any animal that they may want to read about. In reading about all the different creations that God made, we will look at how God created us all differently and how we are all uniquely special to Him. We will see how awesome, and omnipotent God is to have created all the different creatures with such unique characteristics, and thus praise and thank him for all his blessings.
Mrs. Ruiz