Worms, Trees, and Maps Oh My!

I missed a week for WRAP-UP so I decided to do an in between weeks post. We are truly into the full swing of school and boy are we ever busy. Now that we have established our routines, the real work begins!
We have been keeping very busy all day every day and hopefully this will bring everyone up to speed!
Our theme in reading is Journeys. We have read about a grandfather who journeyed across the sea to a new home and this week we are reading about a journey that Robert Ballard took to find the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. The Titanic is a very high interest topic for fourth graders so if you happen to be at the library, maybe check out a book about the Titanic. Spelling words are continuing to come home and I hope students are spending time studying. From the looks of our spelling tests, students may want to study the challenge words a little bit more! Please continue reading at home and studying math facts. I appreciate all the students who remember their reading log on Monday mornings and their spelling homework on Tuesday mornings.
I know that I am really liking our new math series, Everyday Math. We are just finishing up our first Unit and you will be seeing a family letter come home about the next unit. Please keep this family letter as it has answers for the Study Links in it! I appreciate all the support from parents on finishing the Study Links each week and bringing them back to school.
In Social Studies we are finishing our unit on Map Skills. Students have had fun learning important map skills that they can use at home or on road trips. Who needs a GPS when you have a map savvy fourth grader? Mrs. Kurth especially enjoys latitude and longtitude and what a great skill for students to have in their toolbox for map skills. Friday is Constitution Day in the United States so we will also be learning about our Constitution and then starting on the American Government next week.
We are still learning and classifying animals in Science. We have made invertebrate and vertebrate posters as well as written a short report on an animal of our choice.
Exciting times for us this week in 4K was visiting Therese at Jefferson County Park. We can always count on her to show us a fun time as well as learn a lot about the environment we live in. On this particular visit, we played a tree identification game where students identified leaves from a chart and figured out what kind of tree it was. Mrs. Kurth even got stumped a little. (No Pun intended!) It was a great addition to our classification work in the classroom. Not to mention the fun we had doing it. We got to feel what it was like to be a squirrel scrounging for food and what might happen when a fox happens along our way. Students also played a game which made them use their knowledge from the morning tree identification game. All in all, it was a great and sunny day and we can't wait to go back in the Spring! Check off to the side for pictures from our day!