A Full, Fast and Fun Four Days!
Week #26 March 11-14, 2019

We are a happy and tired bunch!  What a week we've had full of wonderful events.  Here's a recap:

Float Parade & Bee Bots
Our two culminating events of our study of US Geography were the Float Parade and coding Bee Bots to travel across a map of the United States.  We did our best as we proudly marched through the school showcasing our floats.  The crowed cheered in support, and we received many, many compliments!  Our floats are now on display in the library for all to enjoy a little more closely.  Then, we used our mapping skills in an application to program bee robots (Bee Bots) to "travel" around the US.

Taiko
Our Taiko Artist-in-Residency began this week with Paton Sensei.  Our piece is entitled "Matsuri Taiko".  We have learned not only about Taiko (learning music by listening, copying and saying the language), we have also learned about Japanese culture and how children are expected to be students.  Ask your child about two ways to sit with straight backs, raising hands, saying, "Hai!" and saying, "-san" at the end of our names.  We will attempt to practice in class next week as we have a short hiatus before Sensei returns, and we prepare for our performance on March 29 at 6:30 pm at SBHS.

Math & Art
We enjoyed math extension activities this week on top of completing our measurement assessment.
First, we explored fractals as an amazing example of mathematics being the study of patterns. Students then tried to either replicate Sierpinski Triangle using pennies or color a master of it noticing the repeated, growing shape.

Here's a link to a quick video defining fractals:
https://www.deviantart.com/tararoys/art/What-is-a-Fractal-255112322
Second, we celebrated Pi Day on March 14.  We read Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi as we learned about the circumference of all circles being just over 3 times the length of its diameter.  So, on 3-14 at 1:59 (3.14159), we were all engaged in math art related to Pi!

Writing
We chose our topic for our final opinion letter.  We then drew inspiration from real kids (Riley Morrison and Simon Link) who wrote letters and affected change.  We learned from them to help plan our drafts to create appropriate, interesting introductions, and to include research, quotes and stories as evidence of our arguments.  We'll continue this next week as we use writing from another 8 year old whose letter got a big response from Hasbro.

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*3-D shapes on our calendar markers
*money value pieces
*Re-reading aloud and singing to improve our silent reading voice
*using the Singing Drums during mindfulness
*Mystery Doug

Thank you for your support!
Mrs. Hock