Welcome to Fourth Grade

MATH
Here are the math units we will be covering in the upcoming months. We are completing a unit on Geometry and will be moving on to the study of fractions. We will study addition and subtraction with like and unlike denominators and fractions of a set. Learning about and seeing fractions in our everyday world will be a piece of cake.... How many pieces can you eat 1/8 or 2/8? And is that more or less than 2/6? Don't like cake? How about a few servings of pizza? Our last unit of study will be on decimals.

SOCIAL STUDIES
A culminating activity for our study of the American Revolution was a visit to the Brandywine Battlefield Park. We a saw video, toured Washington's Headquarters, participated in three programs; a soldier dress up, colonial girl dress up and learned about medical procedures of the 1700's. We will be learning about the Constitution and The Bill of Rights. In preparation for our trip to Harrisburg we will learn about local and state government. We will discuss how a bill becomes a law and other interesting facts about our home state. On our trip to Harrisburg we will visit the governor's home, tour the State Capitol, and the State Museum.

SCIENCE
We had a very informative video conference with Dr. Wtherspoon from the NASA space center in Mississippi. Our skies have not failed us this year. In March we had an asteroid that orbited Earth closer than some of our space probes, Russia had a meteorite hit and the NE United States had a meteor sighting. We continue to follow Curiosity, our current space mission on Mars.

The following link keeps us updated with Curiosity's current mission to Mars. http://www.nasa.gov Click on Curiosity update to see the latest on this mission.

We have completed our experiments on mold. We collected data, drew pictures, took pictures and are ready to start work on our Power Point. Which was more fun - watching our experiments grow molds, designing a moldy tee shirt, or writing a parody for a mold song? In May we will don our moldy tee shirts, pack our disks, and song to meet up with several other students from surrounding Friends schools at West Chester Friends for our annual Environmental Symposium. Prior to our visit to West Chester Friends School parents will be invited to our class to see our power point presentations, hear our mold song, and eat some moldy food.

Our next unit will be on nutrition. We will talk about the nutrients we need every day and carefully study nutrient labels. Our goal after our study on nutrition is to be more conscientious about reading food labels and being mindful of the nutrients that are in the foods we choose to eat. After carefully reading the contents of a container of yogurt one can see that some yogurts may contain 30+ grams of sugar.... that's equal to 8 teaspoons of sugar...sometimes an alternate food choice might be a better option. Hopefully after our study of this unit we will be better informed to make good choices about the foods we eat. Our final science unit will be a study on oceanography.

Community Service activities are scheduled once a month.

We have partnered with the Chester County Food Bank and continue to contribute food items for the Backpack Program. Collection bins are located outside our classrooms and donations of dried pasta, rice, cereal bars, dried fruit, granola bars, and non perishable milk, are always welcomed. Our raised garden beds provided vegetables for the Food Bank last spring, summer, and fall, and we look forward to planting seeds in early spring for more food to be donated in the future. In the fall we had our first class trip to the Food Bank. We toured the facility and decorated boxes that were later filled with food and then distributed. On our second visit, on MLK day, we delivered 124 pounds of food and helped to pack food boxes.

In late fall Goshen Friends held a Community Yard Sale 4 Sandy. 3RD AND 4TH graders made road signs for the sale and we raised over $3500. The proceeds were given to the American Red Cross.
Fourth and fifth graders visited the Kanner Center to deliver the Goshen Giving gifts. We toured the school and spent time in the on campus zoo.

We continue our intergenerational connection with Bellingham, a senior resident, assistant living, and nursing facility. The students in the Kids Care Program visit Bellingham once a month to share a craft activity or play games. At Halloween time the third, fourth, and fifth graders visited the facility to show their costumes. In November, the students used the fall foliage, to make placemats for the residents' dining tables. On MLK Day some students visited Bellingham to pack food bags for Chester County Food Bank.

CULTURAL CALENDAR

Third, fourth, and fifth grades will be studying the country Turkey this year. Our all school study will include Sri Lanka, and Japan. Once a month we have a cultural calendar event where grades K to 5th gather together to learn about one of these countries. The food sampling is always a big hit.

Upcoming trips & Important Happenings:
Planting raised beds
Trip to visit a Mushroom farm and the Herrs factory (PA industry)
Celebration of Friends Day
International Week
Trip to Hershey, PA
Longwood Gardens for some experiential math learning– geometry
West Chester Friends – Environmental Symposium
Trip to Harrisburg

In friendship,
Tr. Elaine