Social Studies

Ni hao! The girls have safely arrived for their adventure in China.  They participated in several different activities, stretching their understanding of the Chinese culture. Our Chinese banquet satisfied everybody's appetite.

Learning Chinese Characters

Tai Chi

Expert Chopstick User

Art: Indian Influence

The girls are doing a clay project with their hands.  Yes, they are going to hand build and they will be making sculptures of their own hands.  Mrs. Hiivala (our MICA student teacher) introduced the students to different ways the hand is used in Indian culture through mudras, dance, gestures, and palm reading. Today the girls made coins with self-generated symbols that represent their futures considering their life line, their heart line and head line.  

French: La Chandeleur

Le 2 février was the French holiday, la Chandeleur. It is similar to Groundhog's Day but notably differs in that the French celebrate by making and eating crêpes. The girls learned about the customs associated with this holiday before discovering that they would be eating real crêpes in class! They chose between une crêpe, une crêpe à la confiture, and une crêpe au nutella. Miam miam bon appétit!

From the Library

Fourth graders have been practicing research skills in Library. We started with our set of World Book encyclopedias. Each researcher chose a volume to peruse before finding a topic she knew nothing about. She then read through the entry and gave a one minute stand up report on what she'd learned. The next week each girl chose a different volume and reported on a topic she'd heard of but about which she knew little, explaining what she already knew and what new information she'd found. Week three was about yet another volume, finding a map of a place they'd never been, and reporting what (city, state, country, continent, planet, mountain range...), where (bordered by, in which continent or state...) and three interesting facts. The last week was about searching through the on-line Encyclopedia Britannica School Edition. Each researcher chose another place and found a video and some sound element, as well as other interesting facts. Some sound elements included national anthems or someone speaking in the local language.
Girls discussed ways in which the two different versions were useful, interesting and easy to use. Ask your daughter about her topics and her discoveries!

Art: Honoring Loss with Symbols

The girls have worked through a process that the Ashanti people in West Africa use to cope with and honor loss in their communities.  They discussed with each other personal losses and created meaningful symbols to honor that loss in the style of the Adrinkra prints. 

Here are some of the art cards that show the process of developing the symbol:

 Herer are some of the girls carving the stamps with linoleum cutter tools:

Tons of Tech

The girls have been very busy in technology this month!  We've been working in Scratch to create games.  You daughter can open these at home.  We have also been working in Pic Collage to create a visual message poster about the rainforest.  We created two posters.  The first poster included information about things that are destroying the rainforest; the second poster included what we can do to help save the rainforest.  Both posters needed to have an instant visual message through the use of background, colors, text, and images.