In music, grades 2-4 have been working with partners to create their own melodies on pitched percussion instruments. Students have also started singing some Spooky Tunes for the upcoming holiday! Beware of "Skin and Bones," "The Ghost of Tom," and "There Was an Old Witch."
Fourth graders and Middle School students talked about Dia de los Muertos and began their Day of the Dead project of making sugar skulls. They are very excited to decorate them with frosting next week!
Third Graders spent more time outside this week! They are practicing to be young naturalists, just like the character, Calpurnia Tate, in the book The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. Third graders are learning how to obverve and not disturb nature. We are writing our observations down in our special naturalist's notebook.
Third Grade students created Calligrams using MS Word. The idea is that by changing the style, size or color of a font you can depict the meaning of a word, for example for little you would choose a small size, for squashed you would choose a condensed or compressed font. They had a lot of fun and came up with some quite creative solutions. When they were finished they got to play www.cheeseorfont.com , a game where you score points by guessing whether a given word is the name of a font or a type of cheese. Try it yourself and let me know how you get on!
After reviewing the difference between fiction and nonfiction, these first graders were excited to choose a book. Please remember that library books are now due weekly.
In Second Grade students have been learning that they can combine the outputs of two programs to create a finished product. In week one, using Word, they had to add adjectives to a paragraph about The Three Bears (this helps them practice editing text) and in week two they created a drawing to accompany the text using the Paint program (and if you haven't tried drawing on a computer yet, you should - it is harder than it seems - hence the looks of concentration!). Finally we used the snipping tool to add the picture to the text. The finished work will be up on display in the Tech Lab by the end of the week.
We learned about Contemporary Pop Artist, Keith Haring and his graphic design. Though the symbols he used seem simple, Keith Haring's art deal with universal themes--love, war, birth, and death. "I wanted people to be affected and challenged and inspired by a work of art."--Keith Haring
2nd,3rd and Middle School students 
Third graders reviewed bedroom vocabulary this week by playing the game, "Donde esta la pegatina?" or "Where is the sticker?".
This week students in Grades 2 through 4 have been practising their word processing skills in Microsoft Word. Second Graders practiced changing the insertion point by adding adjectives to a paragraph about Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Third Graders practised their editing skills by adding the punctuation that was missing from a paragraph about Ellen and her friend Penguin, and Fourth Graders learned to drag & drop or cut & paste text by rearranging the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. They were also able to use Microsoft Paint to create an illustration to accompany the text.
Last week, students worked on Dia de los Muertos projects. Kindergarten made pasta skeletons, first and second grade made smiling skeletons of themselves, and third grade made clay sugar skulls!
