We are studying the Earth System and its Spheres.  We started the unit off with a Peachy Model.  We cut a peach in half.  The skin was the crust of Earth.  The flesh was the mantle.  The pit was the core.    Our lesson review was making a model using ice cream, red hots, & Heath Shell Chocolate.  The red hot was the core, ice cream was the mantle, & the crust was the Heath Shell.  We learned that science can be fun and delicious.

PTCs have moved to Tuesday, October 30th – same times!

Parent-Teacher Conferences are right around the corner. They will be held in individual teacher classrooms on Thursday, October 25, 2012 from 4:15 pm until 8 pm. Report cards will be available in the office and need to be picked up PRIOR to you attending your conference. Parents and students are encouraged to attend the conferences together. We look forward to seeing you!

Our class butterfly surrounded by individual butterflies.

The second and third graders are participating in a Symbolic Migration. We read Hurry and the Monarch, a story about a tortoise and monacrch butterflies. The story told about the migration of monarchs from Canada and the United States to Mexico each fall and their return the following spring. The second and third grade made individual paper butterflies with their name, school, and town. These butterflies will arrive in Mexico about the November 2, the same time the monarchs arrive. They will be joined by thousands of other paper butterflies from the United States, Canada, and Europe. You can see the places that have sent symbolic migration butterflies on the map at http://www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/symbolic_fall2012.html. In the spring, these butterflies will be sent north, but each student will receive a different butterfly. I wonder where our students’ butterflies will go and where ours will come from. To learn more about this project go to the Journey North website.

After reading The Man Who Walked between The Towers, the fourth and fifth graders did a little research on the Twin Towers and 9/11. They recorded their findings on a website called VoiceThread. You can check it out at this link. https://voicethread.com/share/3423565/ This was a learning experience in many ways. We had some technical difficulties and had to find which microphones worked. Students learned to find information then put it into a short comment, then record that comment.

Kindergarten and first graders have learned to link from the HS Hawks home page to the Hay Springs School Library page. Each class has a page with activities they can do. These activities build computer skills, language skills, and math skills. Students can access these activities and others on the site from home as well. The link for the library page is http://mrsmatthews.hshawks.com/