Tales Of A 4-5 Something

The upcoming holiday weekend, January 19, 20, and 21, we think we will have at least 5 inches of snow a day. We used to have snow on the Lower Playground. There was so much snow, but then the temperatures dropped and the snow turned to ice. Cheeks & noses have turned pink. Now it’s icy which is good for sledding and sliding. When will it warm up? Thankfully Friday it will go up into the 30’s . Lots of us have been going skiing and lots more will go skiing this weekend! Elizabeth and Daphne

We have a lot of fun in Studio. I think Studio is a chance for kids do what they like, drawing and art, with a great teacher. Some of our work goes on the walls in the Lower School and some goes in the gallery. These pictures show what the gallery is like. Have you been to see it? You know that you can do the art too! This picture and video is how we are making paste paper for our accordion books. These pictures are of the weavings we are doing like the weaving in a Paul Klee watercolor. Rafe

When we were studying Immigration and Industrial Revolution we were reading books that had characters who immigrated. Everyone in 4-5 read a book like that. In our class we read Maggie's Door, Flying The Dragon, Esperanza Rising, and Honeysuckle House. Each book has a character that left their home to move to America. Some of the stories were historical fiction and two took place today. Even though books happened at different times we found things that each book had in common. At the end we wrote a summary of our book and then made a soundtrack for the book. We made believe the book was a movie and we got to decide what songs played for certain parts. We had to make sure we shared what we knew about the book and sometimes we forgot because we liked the music part. We also got to make a new book cover for the book we read.       Read our summaries and listen to our music. We hope you like it. Maggie's Door      Esperanza Rising ...

In favor of the theme, Immigration and Industrial Revolution, we used a program called Minecraft in order to build our representation of a mill city. We got information from our study of mills and the Industrial Revolution. We saw some videos, worked with maps, and read stories. We learned how the land changed when life went from agrarian to industrial. We learned how hard it was to work in the mills. We also learned about what it was like to travel to a new country then and now. That was push and pull.   Before we built out mill cities each person got to apply for a job. They could be a Hydro Engineer, Mill Architect, City Planner, or Logo Designer. We did a lot before we even started building like designing a plan on graph paper. Then we met in our teams and worked on our jobs ( Logo design planning ). While we built we had to keep showing that we were connecting with the things we learned. ( Canal building and the location of boarding houses ). In the end, w...

The keys tapping and everyone is working tap… tap… tap… Here in 4-5 we are making nonfiction narratives. We had people come in to school who have immigrated to the U.S. Some people were students, some were teachers, some were parents, and others were grandparents. They all told us their stories. My group is writing the story of a girl named Amina who has an AMAZING STORY! You can see our writing on our Thinglink. We all hope that everyone in the world gets a chance to write one of these AMAZING stories! We are all so excited for our next writing project on cartooning! By Ami

A couple days ago a Northern Pine tree was brought in our classroom. This tree represents the winter season and came into our room because of a homestation bill that was proposed by our student congress. We discussed it in Congress and had a vote and the bill passed. Then the bill went to the Executive Branch and it passed too. We felt that the tree would make our homeroom more festive and homie. Before we could decorate it Tim had us do some research. He put up an outline of a key. That was the outline for a puzzle of fact that we put together so we could decorate. One fact is that pine trees can grow to be 100 years old.  Rafe and Rodas

During our Ellis Island simulation we had a lot of parent volunteers. Some were doctors and lawyers and people whe checked immigrants. One mom was a reporter and talked with us as we came into our Ellis Island. She wrote this article for us!   More pictures! **** Yesterday morning, as most of The Big Apple settled into another ordinary day, Ellis Island was abuzz with excitement and new beginnings. I greeted immigrants from many foreign shores, including England, Ireland, Italy, France, Germany, Scotland, South Africa, Iran, Bohemia, Russia, Poland, and Japan! The voyagers had each endured great hardships to at long last reach American soil. Some travelled with siblings, some completed their journey despite being orphaned and alone—still others befriended fellow boat mates and vowed that they would never separate. Travellers described “ atrocious food and filthy mats,” and “a dramatic storm which washed ten people overboard.” They were ...