Fitzpatrick's Friends

I came back to school seamlessly on Monday after a week away with my daughter and new grandson! Thanks to Mrs. Merola the students accomplished some good work and had a great week! Mrs. Colley came in to do 4 Winds while I was gone, and the class also attended the District Art Show.

We are presently studying Native Americans. We spent two weeks learning about the Woodland Indians and are now learning about the Native Americans of the Southwest.

In math we finished Unit 10 and took the test this week. We will work on probability next week and then the students must take the end of the year math assessment before May 25th! I will also start the last reading assessments next week.

It is the end of the year, and we are VERY low on crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc. If you can send some in for your child to use, it would be great!!!!

Happy Mother’s Day to all! I hope the flowers and cards made it home safely!

Flowers!

Activities of the Week:
Finished up the electricity unit by making electromagnets and galvanometers.We had the test on Friday.
We wrote narratives about our trip to Shelburne Farms.
We reached our goal of responsible and respectful behavior! We had an extra recess on Friday and popsicles!

We had so much going on this week! We have begun the last quarter of the year. It is hard to believe that we are in the final stages of the year. We have switched from music to art.
We constructed electric circuits this week. First we investigated conductors and insulators, then we used switches and motors. Finally, we tried making series and parallel circuits. We will finish up our study of current electricity this coming week by making electromagnets and galvonometers. There will be a test on Friday. I have given each student a study sheet with all the information they will need to know. Please review the information with your child. Thanks!

MBS was lucky to have a visit from the US Women’s National Hockey team. They are in Burlington for the World Championships. Each member of the team spoke to the kids and told a little about themselves and how they got to be on the team. We are happy that they had such a great start to the tournament last night by beating Canada 9-2!
We were also pleased to be entertained by a group of musicians from the VSO called Fanfare.

SHELBURNE FARMS

We had a wonderful trip to Shelburne Farms on Thursday. I really appreciated the help of the chaperones who joined us. The kids had a blast feeding the baby lambs, trying to catch and pick up chickens, haulng hay bales, and making felt balls!

Last Thursday and Friday the students took turns giving speeches about their lives as a famous person. Thank you all for supporting your children and helping them put together a costume to wear. They all did a great job presenting in front of Mrs. Forrest’s class as well as their own classmates. I took some pictures and will get them printed for you. In the meantime take a look at the slide show!

Electricity!

The kids have been having fun experimenting with elctricity! They started out with one battery, one bulb, and one wire. The task was to make the lightbulb light!
Since then they have graduated to making circuits and we learned how a lightbulb works.

Reminder: Shelburne Farms Field Trip

This Thursday our class will go to Shelburne Farms. We will be learning about sheep and wool. Make sure your child has a snack and a cold lunch. You can order a cold lunch from the MBS kitchen. Please make sure your child is dressed appropriately and has comfortable footwear. We will be spending time outside. All parents who volunteered to chaperone are welcome!

We have had a lot of fun this week investigating static electricity! We have learned about protons, neutrons, and electrons. One day I brought in a Van de Graf generator and check out the results of our investigation! As you can see, the kids had a blast!

We learned a lot about bird nests this week during 4 Winds. After we examined several kinds of bird nests, the students tried their hand at making a nest. Believe me, they learned that making a nest is not very easy! Take a look at the results.

Reminders:

Next Thursday and Friday everyone will be making their biography presentations. Please help your child with their speech and costume/props.

Shelpburne Farms:
Please return the permission slip for our trip to Shelburne Farms on April 5th.

We had a couple of high spirited leprechauns in our classroom on Friday! Take a look at the pictures below.

We continued our study of magnets this week. We completed an investigation into magnetic force and concluded that although magnetic force goes through other substances, the farther away an object gets, the weaker the force will be.

We used the netbooks in class last week to work on our biography speeches. Students are finishing their work and will bring the speeches home to practice. Please start thinking about helping your child come up with a costume and props for their presentation.

We will be enjoying some summer-like weather this week. I guess we will be able to go outside during 4 Winds on Tuesday. Yeah!

Even though we were only in school for three days this week, we lost no time getting back to work and starting some new units.
We have begun a unit on magnets and electricity. This week students tested various items with magnets to determine what would “stick” and what wouldn’t. We learned that not all metals will stick to a magnet…only those with iron, nickel, or cobalt…or materials made with these metals, such as steel. We also learned about natural magnets called lodestones.

We have begun a Biography unit. Every child has chosen a biography to read. During the next week students will read and take notes about the life of their person. Then we will work on writing a “first person” speech to present to the class. You can refer to the letter and rubric I sent home for more details. Feel free to email me if you have any questions about this project. The children are excited about the unit and motivated to learn more about the person they picked.

On Thursday of this week we were pleased to have a visitor. Mrs.Russo (Owen’s grandmother) spent two hours with us teaching us about all types of fibers. We learned that fibers come from plants as well as animals, and some are also manmade. We were able to touch many types of fibers from all over the world. We also learned about silkworms and how they produce silk. We were able to use microscopes to look at different threads and cloth. Each student was given a real silkworm chrysalis and samples of wool. We also got to remove seeds from cotton right off the plant. Not an easy task! It was very interesting and educational!!!

Finally, we have heard more from Flat Stanley. We learned that there is a Colchester, England with a castle dating back 2,000 years to Roman times. We also heard from Philadelphia and Tennessee.

We have had a very busy week!

Valentine’s Day was Tuesday and all the students had fun exchanging their cards.

Then we practiced for the music concert and performed on Wednesday night! Everyone did an awesome job singing, playing instruments, and dancing! Check out some of the nice clothes the kids wore for the concert!

Jupiter’s Moons
We spent two days learning more about Jupiter’s four largest moons. We observered the moons just as Galileo did 400 years ago! We saw photos of the moons taken by the Voyager Spacecraft as it flew by the planet. We learned about their orbits around Jupiter. Did you know that Callisto is 2 million miles away from Jupiter and Ganymede is as big as the planet Mercury?
There will be a test on the Solar System on Wednesday. I have sent home a review sheet for the students to review at home. Please quiz your child on this information, so they will be prepared for the test.

Interplanetary Jammin’
We spent the week practicing each day, and the end result was fantastic! The children worked very hard and benefitted greatly from the experience. Getting up in front of over 100 people to speak and sing is not an easy thing to do, but they all did a great job! We video taped one rehearsal and showed the students the tape. It was a real learning experience to see themselves, and helped to get some of the last mintue “kinks” out of the show. I hope you all enjoyed seeing your child perform!

Valentines’ Day Party
Our class will have a Valentine Party on Tuesday, February 14th at 2:15 p.m. The children are encouraged to bring Valentines for All their classmates. We will also have some treats and exchange valentines.

Other Activities this week:
Alien presentations: The students did a fantastic job on their aliens and we all enjoyed hearing about them.
We worked on summarizing during our reading time.
We have reached the end of Unit 7 in math. I encourage you to help your child practice the multiplication facts as well as subtraction facts if your child has not already mastered them. Unit 7 test will be this week.
We have been working on some writing skills in preparation for narrative writing. Using descriptive language, interesting verbs, and writing showing, not just telling sentences are a few things we have practiced. Next week we will begin brainstorming for our personal narratives. They need to write a “seed story”, which is a brief experience. Please help your child come up with an experience they have had. I will send home a paper so that you can talk about the experience with them and help them sequence the events. It does not have to be a monumentous event… but something meaningful to them.

Visits from Flat Stanley
This week we heard from Orchard Park, NY (a suburb of Buffalo), Sarasota, FL, and Flat Staney flew from Tempe, AZ to Mt. Hood, Oregon to vacation at the Timberline Lodge. Then he went to Cancun, Mexico. This has been a great geography lesson, and we appreciate all the effort taken by those folks who received Flat Stanley in the mail!

Reminder: Our class will be performing in the Music Concert on Wednesday night, February 15th. Hope to see you there!

Interplanetary Jammin’
Well, it’s crunch time. We started practicing on the stage with Mrs. Forrest’s class on Friday. The students are working hard to make our show entertaining and impressive! I’m sure you will all enjoy it!

Aliens:
Don’t forget that the aliens are due on Monday. Some students have already brought theirs in and shared with the class. As you can see from the photos, they are all very creative. They will all be on display on Thursday night!

4 Winds:
Thanks to Mrs. Colley and Mrs. Dean, our class had 4 Winds this week. The topic was SNOW. We saw a puppet show about different types of snowflakes and saw a slide show of great pictures! The kids also made snowflakes. We did an activity to compare a cup of snow and find out how much water it contains. We found out that a cup of snow equals about half as much water!

Flat Stanley
This week we received information from Glens Falls and Lake George. We also heard from Richmond, VA and Boston.

Solar System:
This week the students wrote poems about the planets and made pictures of the Solar System. The children are rapidly completing the activities on their space contracts and continue to move their rockets across our bulletin board!