Choice Time Bloggers

How was Spring Break? This week at 4-309 we have been doing our state wide tests! We did three ELA ( English Language Arts) test this week. Today is Friday April 20th. We made home-made butter with heavy whipping cream and shook it in a mini jar. Happy Birthday Kyle, Chiara, and Stella. We had tasty cupcakes and sang " Happy Birthday! Next week we have the three math tests.
by Abby, Alexa and Stephanie :)

 

Visit from the Brooklyn Historical Society

Last month, we had a special guest from the Brooklyn Historical Society visit our classroom and bring in artifacts from colonial New Amsterdam.  We got a chance to explore the artifacts and figure out how they were used.  Can you name the items we saw?

Mr. Chris helps pass around a real beaver pelt.

Is is a candle holder?  An icing piper?  Nope, it's a candle mold!

This table guessed this primer would be used in Sunday School--and they were close!  Children in New Amsterdam used these primers to learn the alphabet and important prayers in school.

Brooklyn Museum

Checking out the Old Dutch house

Sketching some Near Eastern reliefs

On Wednesday, our class took a trip to the Brooklyn Museum.  It was so cool because they had Dutch houses, paintings, and artifacts.  It was so cool to see the Egyptian exhibit and learn about the mummies.  Thank you to all the moms and dads who came with us!
by Alexa & Ms. Rippe

Coming To The New World

Using tea bags to dye our journal paper

Lacing together our journal

Class 4-309 is working on historical fiction journals.  What we do in the journals is write about coming to a new world and how our trip was. We made up characters for our journals who are coming for religious freedom or to make money. So far, we've been writing good, interesting stories about how our characters are feeling about their journey.  We also have little boats on a line in the classroom that tell us where we are in the sea. To see how our trip is going is choose someone at our table to pick a piece of paper that says the weather of our trip and how many miles we covered in each round of sailing.  Some people have sailed over a 1,000 miles because they've had great weather and gentle winds.  Other boats have hit bad storms and still have a long way to go.  So that's what we are working on in Social Studies.

by Jewells

Some of our boats on their way to the New World

Super Bowl Champs!

We were so excited by the Giants' Super Bowl victory that we did a quick shared writing about last night's game.  Can you find the main idea and supporting detail sentences in our paragraph below?

The New York Giants won the Super Bowl last night.  The winning touchdown was scored in the last two minutes of the game.  Eli Manning was named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the Super Bowl.  There will be a parade tomorrow in Manhattan to celebrate their victory.

Groundhog Day

Today we watched a Groundhog Day video to practice taking notes and writing summaries.  We learned some interesting facts about the history of holiday and the town of Punxsutawney.  If you want to watch the video again, check out the link below:

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/sara-brings-groundhog-day-out-of-shadow/63bg54w

Are you happy with Phil's prediction?
--By Alexa, Mariel & Ms. Rippe

Information Books

Our class has been working on information books since the beginning of January. The kids have been doing nonfiction information projects on people, animals, and history.  This week, we worked hard to publish our pieces.  We made sure to include nonfiction text features like a table of contents, glossary, diagrams and pictures with captions.

We are looking forward to sharing our information books with all the fourth grade classes!
Parents are invited to join us in the gym next Friday (2/10) from 9:00-9:30.  Come ready to learn!

By Solly & Ms. Rippe