November 30 - December 11

So, I really meant to write a blog for last week, but before I knew it the weekend was over, and the week was flying by, so I'm here now, writing for two weeks. With that in mind, I'll go ahead and post two different pictures because over the course of the two weeks, there were a couple of really fun projects we did. The first comes from the previous week. In science we've been learning about light. One particular lesson, we learned about the colors of light and how a prism can separate white light into all the colors of the spectrum. So we made ourselves a prism and hung them in the window of the school for all to see.

The second pictures derives from our story this week. We learned about the ancient Greeks and Romans. With that, we learned that our modern alphabet comes from the alphabet of the ancient Greek. We took the Greek alphabet aligned side by side with our alphabet and made ourselves nametags written in Greek. The picture below is just a sampling of how well they turned out.

The past now behind us, we look to the future. Only one week left until the Holiday break! I can't believe that 2009 is almost past! We have a busy week ahead of us this week. A couple of school wide items, Tuesday we're having the Geography bee. We have two students that have made it into the semi-final tie breaker on Monday to see who all will compete on Tuesday. We also have our school choir performing for us on Tuesday afternoon.

In class this week, we will be reading our story, "The Skill of Pericles". Accompanying that in language we will divulge ourselves a little deeper into adjectives as we learn about proper and demonstrative adjectives. We will also be writing our second story in the adventures of our Flat Stanleys. This week we will be writing about our Stanleys visit to the Great Saltaire. I'm hoping that they will have returned from Australia by the time we get back from break, so we can write about our adventures down under, and then send them somewhere for their newest adventure!

Math this week will be a review of the measurements of circles through the books, "Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi" and "Planetary Circles". We will also be reviewing for and taking our November benchmark test this week.

In science, we will be finishing up our unit on light. We have a visit from an optometrist on Monday, a video on Tuesday, a review day Wednesday, and then the quiz on Thursday. When we return from break, we will beginning our unit on sound!

I would just like to take this moment to throw out a HUGE thanks to all of the parents who volunteer their time. I would like to share my upmost gratitude to those who have come in and shared their special talents with us. A special thanks this week to Justin Holt, who will be the optomestrist who comes in on Monday and shares his expertise as to how light works with the human eye. Also to Gina Mills, who comes in once a month during our PE time to share with the students her expertise in Yoga.

I think I'll send home a note on this as well, but I know all of you parents have special talents such as these. If you have a talent you'd be willing to share with the class, feel free to let me know via e-mail (apratt@syracuseartsacademy.org) or through a note to class. If you let me know what your talent is, I will do my best to find a place we can tie it into the curriculum.

Thanks, thanks, thanks again for everything you all have done and will do!

Volunteers don't get paid. Not because they're worthless, but because they're priceless. ~Sherry Anderson