Greetings from the Elementary Classroom!
I hope everyone had a restful Thanksgiving break. Many students shared their Thanksgiving plans with me last week and some of them spent time making cards and notes for visiting grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Some of my returning students thought it would be fun to put on a skit about my childhood Thanksgiving experiences (since they hear me tell the story every year). My favorite part was their reenactment of my ride across Lake Huron on the “slow boat”.
I would like to give a big THANK YOU to Tori & Robin for hosting our annual Thanksgiving Feast. This year, after much discussion, the students decided to make one dish from each of the 5 largest countries. As you may know, the 3rd year students are doing a year long study of the United States and the Upper El students have chosen to explore Canada and Russia. Once they discovered that theses made up 3 of the 5 largest countries, they made a quick decision to add the other 2 (China and Brazil). Be sure to ask students which dish was their favorite and which foods were new to them.
I look forward to getting back to school tomorrow. We have been having a great time during Monday violin practice. Remember that students may come at 8:00 for some extra practice time. We held a class meeting to discuss how students are feeling about Monday practice and we all agreed that interruptions really cut into our already short time. Students who wish to participate should arrive between 8-8:05. At 8:05 we will close the doors until 8:30.
Some Quick Highlights:
Allagash (1st Year)
* This group began studying flags last week. We talked about what flags represent and looked at several examples. Students drew flags from North American countries.
*Students created quadrilateral collages while learning about the rhombus, kite, chevron and parallelogram.
Moosehead Lake (2nd Year)
* The 2nd year students learned about the Cambrian Period and all of its interesting life forms. We discovered that life at this time existed in the water for many reasons. Ask your student about the conditions of our planet at that time.
Acadia (3rd Year)
*The 3rd year students researched population and land area of all the states. They ranked the states from largest to smallest by both size and population. Students then used that information to write statements to share with the group. Some examples from their notebooks:
-Texas has the 2nd highest population and the 2nd highest land area.
-Alaska has the highest land area, but not that many people.
-Maryland has more than 5 million people, but it isn’t very big. I think that’s because a lot of people work in Washington DC.
-Hardly anybody lives in Wyoming.
Katahdin (Upper El)
*We worked with the pegboard to find the lowest common multiple & greatest common factors of a variety of numbers. This required a good understanding of prime numbers. Ask your student to list some prime numbers and explain what makes a number prime.
*Students used the constructive triangles to form statements about each shape (one red equilateral triangle is equal to one fourth of the gray triangle, etc).
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| Students were thrilled to finally receive the checkerboard lesson. These two students were very excited when they discovered that this equation left them with a product in the 10 billions place! |
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| 1st & 2nd year students are studying flags. They spent hours drawing the flags of North America. |
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| Students drew state flags into each state. They’ll tell you that some were more challenging than others! |