Creativity

When "harnessing holiday energy", crafting opportunities work well. Today, Ms. Leom pulled out "materials" and organized some random crafts for us to "create". It offers time to talk too. Our brains are FILLED with ideas, thoughts, and events that we are bursting to share with our classmates.

(the finished products are "top secret" as some families may find them as gifts)

Common during this time as the talk about Santa ... since Ms. Leom is a true believer in the *magic* of Christmas, Santa Claus, and the holiday season, we do our best to maintain the spirit of the season.

Ms. Leom's "elves"hard at work

Grinch Week

It is Grinch Week in fourth grade. We like to "harness the holiday energy" and put it to productive learning use. This means we are using the Grinch to review and practice our learning from earlier in the school year: character traits, compare and contrast, cause and effect, subjects and predicates ... We even created Grinch folders, called "Grinch Portfolios" to showcase our learning. We enjoyed our surprise guest readers. We are looking at the different types of media: cartoon, book, music, and movie that tell the Grinch story.

Principal, Mr. Voshell, was a surprise guest reader.

Assistant Principal, Mr. Meyer was a guest reader.

Students worked on their reading fluency. we sang the words to our Grinch Week theme song.

We created Grinch Portfolio Folders to keep our collection of Grinch learning, review, and practice.

 

We learned about the Parts of Speech (nouns, verbs, ...) and identified them in our theme song ...

the beginning of our learning ...

In fourth grade, we take our Grinch learning serious. Just meet some of our favorite local Grinches ...

Team Grinch: Mr. Greninger, Mrs. Arens, Ms. Prose, Ms. Leom, Mr. Lundeen

Let the Grinch-y learning continue!!

And the Winner is ...

Mr. Greninger's class won the United States Postcard Race. They were the first classroom to receive postcards, postmarked from all fifty states.

the winning collection, Mr. Greninger

Mr. Lundeen & Ms. Prose's collections

Ms. Aren's collection

Ms. Leom's collection - in a basket so students can read them

Congratulations!! So exciting!!

Band

One of the exciting events of fourth grade, at the end of the year, students learn about the different instruments, with some coaching from experienced band teachers they have the opportunity to try out the various instruments, and select an instrument to play in band. The experience begins in December, when fifth grade students return to walk the elementary hallways and showcase what they have already learned in four months.

Mr. Garber introducing the flute

our mini concert

Ms. Leom's classroom experienced songs by the flute this week. More instruments will be visiting in the coming week. So much fun!!

Thank You!

Earlier in the school year, fourth graders were tested on their home addresses. This week, we put them to use!

One of our Common Core Standards is to write using a variety of purposes and formats. Letter writing is one of the formats students need to know. Over Thanksgiving break, students had an assignment to write down the address of their host/hostess of their Thanksgiving meal.

Last week, we learned the letter writing format. We wrote Thank you notes to our hosts. Then we learned how to address an envelope. Today we mailed them! SO EXCITING!!!

walking to the mailbox in the office to mail our thank yous

dropping our envelopes into the mailbox

walking to the office to mail our thank yous

mailing our envelopes

Writing Thanks You notes are a life skill. Students are encouraged to write Thank Yous when they need to express gratitude.

the Pledge

For the last two weeks, fourth grade classes have been featured on the Wolf News (the elementary announcements), leading the Pledge of Allegiance.

So Proud!!!

Reward

On Friday, we had a reward. Students could choose between making "Craft" room or the "Game Board" room. There was the "Stain Glass Windows"craft or craft kit choices. There were so many students interested in the Stain Glass Window, the craft kit choices were moved to the board game room. The pictures reflect the Stain Glass Window Progress.

Onoma- WHAT?!!

This week we are learning about "onomatopoeia". It refers to a word created to imitate a natural sound. The words: Bam! Achoo! Meow! Woof. Splash! Boom! are just a few examples.

One of the best ways to learn something new, is to teach it to someone else. It was time for Book Buddies this week, so Ms. Leom checked out books in the Froggy series. She introduced the term, "onomatopoeia", then read part of a Froggy book to us. Each time there was an example, we shouted out, "onomatopoeia". Then she sent us to grab a book and read it for ourselves, finding the examples on our own. Next, she told us that we were going to be reading this series to our kindergarten reading buddies. We would teach them about onomatopoeia, and we could come up with a secret direction just between us (tap our nose, give me five, tap the book ...) at each example. We would teach, read, and learn about onomatopoeia. We were thrilled to start!

We started by picking a book and pre-reading it.

Then, it was time to share our books with our reading buddies.

nose tapping for each example

high five for each example

Mr. Greninger's class will be "reading" about onomatopoeia next week. So much fun!!