Newsletter: Wednesday, April 8

It's good to be back! The kids returned from their relaxing and adventurous break ready to jump right back in. I'm not sure that was your experience when you woke them up on Monday morning but once they were here they were excited to see friends and be back together. The landform projects they created and painted before spring break were dry and ready to be admired. They had worked in groups to create 3-D models of a mountain, canyon, valley, island, and volcano. Nadia's grandmother coordinated and took the lead on this project. Everyone did such a wonderful job.

Valley

Island

Canyon

Volcano (and yes, it did erupt!)

Mountain

We are now beginning our final nine weeks. This year feels as though it has gone so quickly. We'll spend the next week or two doing a little preparation for the upcoming ACT Inspire test. We don't do a whole lot with this but we do reflect back on what we've learned so far this year and study the format we anticipate seeing on the test. Once we feel comfortable with this we'll move right back into our normal curriculum. There are still lots of cool things planned for this year. These include...

1. We'll soon begin our study of the Civil War. This event will be used to consider the role of a national government as it relates to the rights of states and individuals. A great example of this going on right now are the debates happening around the Religious Freedom bills in Indiana and Arkansas. We'll discuss why some laws are best suited for states to decide and why others are considered best suited for the national government to decide. We'll also work to find which laws fall under each category as well as what decisions we make as individuals (in the place of an established law). 

We'll also use the study of the Civil War to, again, read about the same events from multiple perspectives. My goal, when learning about history, is to teach the kids to become critical consumers of information. Any text we read is written from a particular perspective. By reading various pieces/artifacts we are able to see the complexity of issues and people who are often made to be one dimensional and straight-forward (take, for instance, the Emancipation Proclamation or Abraham Lincoln). 

2. In writing we will be studying biographies. The kids will eventually select someone to study and write about on their own. The subjects for our biographies will be people who have worked to make some sort of difference. 

3. In reading we have one more novel study to share together. I'm not certain of the exact title just yet. I had been planning to do Charlotte's Web but I'm now considering a few other titles as well. If we do wind up reading Charlotte's Web the kids will feel as though they already know it so well from having heard it when they were younger or from having seen the movie. However, a second reading would allow them to see how they've grown as readers of the word and the world. They would get so much more out of that story than they had noticed the first time around (when they most likely focused on it as a story about a spider who could write).

4. In math we'll do a good bit more with data collection and analysis as well as learn the traditional methods of solving multi-digit multiplication and division problems. Another topic of study will be probability.

5. In science we'll be exploring electricity. This is always a very fun hands-on exploration the kids absolutely love!