What a Week!

The end of October and the beginning of November have been filled with a number of exciting happenings for all of us in 4St. There have been two recent field trips, a class open-house breakfast, a little Halloween celebration, and a few little lessons on a very important and memorable Election Day 2008. Having the help of so many parents and the energetic participation of our students throughout these last couple weeks has been quite invigorating to experience, from this teacher's point of view! I will post a few photos – something visual to help convey an idea of several of the happenings. I want to explain that the photos are purposefully missing specific faces of us, since I have some questions to clarify about posting pictures of any of us in a public way. I believe we will get to have more lively and personal images up here soon, but to keep it easy for now, let your imagination work – or ask your child to talk – as you read a little about some of our days' happenings.



Lots of opinions and discussions as Election Day approached! We learned about the Electoral College and made predictions about the number of Electoral Votes the winner would receive. As of this morning, Obama had 338 votes, and Isaac's guess of 334 is stunningly close! But, if any other states go for Obama, Emma's guess of 350 could be the closest.



After a late Election Night for many of us, Wednesday's trip to Plimoth Plantation required us to perk up and travel to a "living history museum" in Plymouth, MA. It was a balmy fall day!

We visited the 1627 English Village ...

















And we also got a chance to talk with museum guides dressed in traditional attire and recreating daily life in a Wampanoag village while explaining how various tasks were performed.



















Last week, just before Halloween, we took a trip to Cambridge to investigate some science concepts around rocks and minerals. We toured the Harvard Museum of Natural History's gorgeous Hall of Minerals exhibit, and hung around...














for a while to take part in a "Discovery Class" where we realized the vast array of minerals we use each day in our lives!
Here are a few:

Many of us were inspired by our focus on rocks to bring in a favorite rock, and others just looked out for one that could be used in class for an observation activity. I tried my hand at capturing the spirit of my rock using a drawing program at Art.com and I hope to introduce this to the students for them to create portraits of their rock. Here is the portrait I made of my wishing rock, "Hope."




It was a lot of fun making this! Click here to watch the process, and maybe make your own!





Finally, it is time to say thanks to all the parents and kids for a great couple weeks. Thanks to all of our chaperons (too many to list here!) , photographers (a couple of Debby's pictures are used here), and pumpkin contributors (Sandy and her daughter Alex)! We had a lovely pumpkin to add some atmosphere to our breakfast, and after cleaning it out and giving it a quick carving treatment while the class was at "instrumentals" – we had a festive jack-o'-lantern!
Behold, the Great Pumpkin!