Dear Parents,
It continues to be an exciting, activity filled month at HIS. Next week is International Week. On Wednesday and Thursday from 9 - 12, the children will be sharing what they have learned about Madagascar with the rest of the Elementary grades. Please feel free to join us if your schedule allows. In five groups, they are creating posters about the climate, geography, history, people and culture, and wildlife of this fascinating island nation. They are looking great! I will be posting pictures of them on the blog when they are all complete.
In addition to doing research about Madagascar and regular class work, the students also began a new project about endangered animals. They have each been assigned an endangered animal to research and report on. They will create Google Presentations and present them to the class. This assignment is due Wednesday, February 29th. Although they will have some class time to complete it, they will likely need to do some of the work at home. In a separate post, I am including the letter I gave to the children explaining the requirements of the project and links to useful websites for research.
Now, the progress made in regular course work. In Social Studies, we have concentrated on our study of Madagascar and will do so through next week. The following week, we will continue our study of the Northeast region of the United States. In Science, we continued with Chapter 7: Adaptation and Extinction. We will complete Lesson 2: Threats to Survival by Monday and move on to Lesson 3: Fossils. We will conclude Chapter 7 and the unit on Life Science by the end of the following week. Then we will begin our Earth Science unit. In Math, we continued with Chapter 11: Divide by Two-Digit Divisors. We completed Lesson 5: Two-Digit Quotients and will finish Lesson 6: Adjusting the Quotient and Lesson 7: Multi-Step Problems early next week. We will review on Wednesday and have the Chapter 11 test on Thursday, February 23rd. This will conclude Unit 4: Division of Whole Numbers. We will begin Unit 5: Measurement and Graphing on Monday the following week; this unit consists of four chapters. In English, we completed up to Lesson 4: Abbreviations. We will continue our study on Unit 5: Capitalization and Punctuation next week, completing it the following week. For Reading next week, we will be focusing on folktales from Africa. There were simply not enough from Madagascar, so the class will read several from this most interesting continent.
Lastly, I have included some new links to websites for Science on my blog. I have listed the name of the website along with a short review below. I have looked each one over, although in some cases briefly, to ensure that it is a quality site.
Useful Science Websites (note - the links for these sites are on the right side of my blog):
National Geographic Kids: More than just a science site, this is an outstanding resource! It has many nice features: games, videos, animal profiles, country profiles, news, fun extras, and even a page for little kids.
Science New for Kids: Wonderful website! It looks great, is user friendly, and you can find many good articles on various Science topics.
Eco Kids: Great website! This Canadian site features games, activities, homework help, on-line articles, and a kid's blog.
Kids' Planet: Excellent website! This site is geared toward promoting awareness of wildlife preservation. It has great fact sheets on endangered animals (listed by continent or habitat), games, information of helping save wildlife, and cool extras.
Earth Touch: Another great site, full of great videos.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
I hope you have a weekend!
Best regards,
Mr. Ahlers
