Spring Break

Enjoy a safe, relaxing, and sunny Spring Break with your family!

See you all at 8:30 on Wednesday, April 23rd!  (And remember:  If you're running late on Wednesday, we're in the dance studio until 9:15.)

Sand as a Building Tool

Today we finished our rock and soil study.  We have been exploring these Earth materials over the past few months and today we got to use one of them to build art sculptures.  We used a matrix made of water and cornstarch to build sand sculptures and explore the uses of rocks as artists.  These creations will be going home soon for your family to enjoy!

Into the Woods...and Caves

Yesterday we headed out in the beautiful weather and visited Inwood Hill Park.  We traveled to the northern tip of Manhattan to explore the natural habitats that the Lenape lived in hundreds of years ago. Inwood Hill Park is the only naturally found forest on the island of Manhattan.   We took lots of notes and sketches about what we heard and saw of the natural habitats. We found lots of different habitats that we had studied - cliffs, rocky beaches, forests, rivers, streams, and lots more!  We also went to see some caves that the Lenape spent time in when fishing and hunting in northern Manhattan.  The caves were so cool!

Publishing our Fairytales!

We first decided that published
books needed covers, title
pages, and dedication pages.
We then began adding to our
list in a "what else" section.  As
we publish, the list is growing!

As we wind down in our narrative writing unit, we are publishing hard-cover books to showcase our hard work from the month of March.

We have really been working hard to create revised and edited books that not only feature engaging characters and exciting plot-lines, but also show off well-planned dialog and edited paragraphs.  We have been using our drafts to publish our writing so that we can share it soon.

As we publish, we've also been charting what we notice published books often have.  From dedication pages to back-of-the-book blurbs, from enriching recipes to title pages, we are creating professional books.  We've been adding to our list as we publish so that we can continue being self-directed writers. We're all at different points in the publishing process but we're all taking control of our work, direction, and pace to complete what we think is important before the deadline.

Stay tuned for an upcoming publishing share!

Soil Researchers

Digging for soil

In science, we have been learning about rocks and soil.  We learned that soil is made of two things - rocks and humus.  We know a lot about rocks already and so we learned that humus is decayed Earth material, such as plants or animals.

Last week we observed soil that we made in the classroom.  We noticed that the soil was made of different sized rocks - sand, clay, pebbles, and gravel - as well as humus.  When we added water to our vials of soil we saw that some of the humus floated and some of it did not!

Today we walked to the park and collected soil from a variety of places.  We then began comparing the soil that we made in the classroom to the soil we found at the park.  Even though all of the soil was from the same park, it still looked different based on where we found it.

We will continue our study of soil for the next few weeks - and see how it affects plants in the near future as well!

Swimming!

Today was our last Monday for swimming lessons!  We have one more make-up date for swimming on April 2nd.  If you can come volunteer to help supervise the locker rooms, please meet us in the lobby by 11:25 on that date.  It's been a lot of fun and we've learned so much already!

Advances in Chess

Today we began playing full games of chess!  This involved a LOT of concentration, strategy, and thinking - but it was also a lot of fun!  Over the next few weeks we'll be playing lots of chess to improve our defense and offense as players.