Colonial Days and Feast

By george, is it really Tanner?

Shall we have tea?

Our dellarobia table designs were beautiful for the feast

Dressed in colonial attire, our class spent two days participating in numerous activities including hat making, calligraphy, tin design, candle making, pomanders, games, quilting, creating our own whirligigs, formal tea time, weaving, papyrotamia, and stitchery. We also enjoyed a tremendous feast put on by our fabulous parents. We had an authentic colonial menu and decorated the table using dellarobia, which includes symmetry and fresh fruit. We also performed a minuet for our parents and they even insisted on an encore!

Colonial Home Field Trip

How fortunate we are to be have an authentic colonial home right here Edmond. Mr. and Mrs. Duncan gave us a grand tour of their home showing us how a colonial kitchen worked, the symmetry associated with that period of architecture, the importance of tea, and many details about furniture making and blacksmiths. Perhaps the biggest highlight was having Mr. Duncan shot his flintlock rifle in the backyard. Sixty students and fifteen parents jumped in surprise at that explosive sound! We concluded the day by writing letters of appreciation to our wonderful hosts.

Guest Speakers

We were privileged in October to have guests speakers Dr. Ray Campbell and Shelley Mitchell teach us about trees. Dr. Campbell is a retired OSU professor and Isabella's grandfather and Shelley is an Extension Plant Science Specialist with OSU. They had many activities and examples to help us understand the importance of trees in our everyday lives. We were amazed to see the normal household products that contain elements from trees such as certain cleaners, makeup and spices.

Book Buddies

Every two weeks we enjoy time with our book buddies. We have teamed up with Mrs. Nelson's first grade class this year. We love reading together and building a friendship. After all, those first graders really look up to us.

Grandparents' Day

What a heartwarming day we had with our grandparents visiting. The auditorium was swelling with pride as our grandparents heard each grade perform hymns of praise on the stage. Our principal, Mrs. Leadford, recognized the grandparents who had traveled the farthest, those with the most grandchildren, the oldest, etc. Those are always fun to hear. Then we gave our grandparents tours of our room, introduced them our teacher and friends, and showed them our seed booklets. We also gave them an acrostic about them, a paragraph, and let them see our drawings of how we think we will look as grandparents. Now those are funny!!! Riley and her nana are enjoying minute of this memorable day.

Science: Problem/Hypothesis/ Conclusion

We have been learning about plants in science and decided to conduct an experiment with bean seeds. Our problem: "Do bean seeds need light to grow?"; Our hypothesis: " Bean seeds do need light to grow"; Our conclusion: " Bean seeds DO NOT need light to grow". We took bean seeds and planted cups filled with potting soil, lightly watered them, and then placed our cups in a place where they received plenty of light and in a box where it was totally dark. We recorded our observations for several days. To our surprise, we found that the bean seeds in the dark GREW almost as rapidly as the seeds planted in the light. The cotyledeon stayed on the stems to provide nourishment for the tiny seedlings. Then it slowly shriveled up when the seedling began to mature. Later we found that the plants in the dark began to grow faster than the plants in the light!!! They were desperately trying to find the light. A very obvious observation was the fact that the plants in the dark were light yellow or white compared to the deep green of the seedlings in the light. Chlorophyll production was noticably different in the two environments.

After completing our observations over nearly two weeks, we made tri-fold displays to show what we had learned. Pierson is definitely proud of his efforts. Good job, Pierson!

Wildlife Expo Field Trip

Fourth grade had a fantastic time at the Wildlife Expo held this past weekend at the Lazy E Arena. This free event was sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. There were so many hands-on activities and displays to see that many students decided they wanted to bring their families back over the weekend. Some of the highlights included kayaking, fishing, archery, basket weaving, watching arrowheads and bows being made, and filling up our bags with cool information about Oklahoma's wildlife.

Land Ahoy!

Jacob as Hernando Cortes, the Spanish conquistador who conquered the Aztec empire. Way to go on that costume, Jacob!
Isabella, Kaylee, Brock, and Bethany present the details of Henry Hudson's early life and his explorations. Our smartboard was used by each group to show the details of the routes taken.

Explorer Project

Bailey can't resist showing off his explorer project. His coloring skills are impeccable! Now we are researching various explorers in preparation for brief presentations next week. Each group will be sharing about the early life of the explorer, his voyages, challenges he faced, routes taken, and the impact of the exploration for our lives today.

Gel Pen Friday

At the end of the week each student has an opportunity to enjoy creating with the gel pens as a reward for Christ-like behavior, completing assignments, using self-control and making wise choices. Some of us design journal covers, others doodle, but whatever the case, it is fun to hang out with friends. We are aiming to have 100% participation.














Kaylee is definitely up to something terrific.

Insect Fair

Our long awaited Insect Fair occurred today after lunch. A highlight was having our principal, Mrs. Leadford, stop by to view our "creature features". Each fourth grader displayed their collection of real insects along with the imaginary insect they had designed last week. We rotated from classroom to classroom to view all of them. There were lots of exclamations and comments such as "cool", ", "look at this one", "those colors are amazing!". I also heard from a few students that their mom DEFINITELY didn't want the collection returned home!!! They kindly donated them to me :).

Attributes of God

Our first unit in Bible involves learning the attributes of God. So far we have recognized God as holy, immutable omnipotent,omniscient, and omnipresent. Studying Moses and the Israelites has encouraged us to contemplate what a great God we have. We are currently memorizing Psalm 103:6-10 because it highlights all that God did for Israel when they left Egypt and spent 40 years in the wilderness.

Aren't we a great looking group?

We can be silly and we can be studious. Either way, we love learning together in room 207.

A Proud Collector

Maddie collected her insects over the weekend. They are labeled and secured with straight pins. Some of the specimans are very "fragrant"! That just adds to the excitement of having 20 collections on display in our classroom. Great job, Maddie!

We're going buggy!!!

Our class is already forging ahead to chapter 2 in science which features insects and spiders. We had our creative juices flowing and designed some unique critters using materials from our classroom. Each student included all the components of a real insect: head, thorax, abdomen, eyes, antennae and legs. Aren't they fabulous? Over the weekend we are all out collecting at least six insects in our neighborhoods and parks. We have to carefully catch them using a tweezer or net, place them in a baggie in the freezer for a few hours and then put them in a labeled section of an egg carton. We are using insect field guides or the internet to help us find the correct names of our critters. At the end of this week we plan to have an Insect Fair allowing all three fourth grade classes to view all the collections.