Weekly News 12/13

This week had us designing, building, experimenting, and wondering! Our inquiry about systems has continued as children learn about how the parts of a system work together to accomplish a job.  This means we are diving deep into the crazy mind of Rube Goldberg! After watching some videos of Rube Goldberg machines in action, students have been working to design a system that completes a simple task.  We drew up plans and brainstormed the supplies we would need and the building and testing will start on Monday! Your child should know what they need to bring.

We also explored how systems need energy and learned about potential and kinetic energy. After defining these terms the classes applied these ideas to amusement park rides! We built several models to test how to get enough energy to make the ride work, as well as how energy can be transferred.  Be sure to ask your child what they learned!

We will be working to integrate reading and writing into our systems inquiry.  This week we learned about determining importance with non-fiction texts.  We read a biography about Rube Goldberg and highlighted and summarized the important parts.  We will continue to build non-fiction reading skills through research about systems.

In math both 3rd grade and 4th grade has reached the end of our addition and subtraction units and are working on showing what we know! Children are using real life data to write and solve word problems using addition and subtraction. Some of the data we are using includes population, cost of vacations, football stats, and National Park visitors.  Ask your child what questions they answered!

A note about our holiday party
We will be doing a book exchange at our holiday party next week.  Books DO NOT need to be new! We encourage your child to bring in a book they love and have already read!

Upcoming dates
12/20- Holiday party
12/23-1/1- Winter break