Take A Look Through Our Eyes: Newbery Medal Books

What makes a truly great book? That is the question we posed to two of our fourth grade classes today. Their answers varied from well developed characters, visual setting, and exciting plot, to lots of action and suspense.
Our next reading unit takes a close look at Newbery Medal and Newbery Honor books. [...]

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A Step Into the Past: Peabody Essex Museum

There was excitement in the air this morning as we boarded the bus for our field trip to the Peabody Essex Museum. Upon arrival, we were quickly ushered into the highlight of our visit, The Yin Yu Tang House. Once lived in by eight generations of the Huang family in a small village [...]

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A New Photo For Our Blog Header

Many thanks to Mr. Colantuono for the beautiful new photograph for our class blog. Photography is a serious hobby of Mr. C’s and he has offered to let us use his wonderful pictures to show the change of seasons on our blog.

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Right Next Door

Frogs sit in little depressions by the water’s edge (some of which are flooded, but the frogs sit in them anyway), and in front, behind, beside, and above you dragonflies and damselflies fly around catching smaller insects.
Looking at the slow moving river we search for fish. We gaze up at the trees looking on [...]

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Museum of Science: A Day of Adventure

While the rest of the school was just getting ready to begin their day, our fourth graders enthusiastically boarded the school buses and headed to the Museum of Science in Boston. Once we arrived, our first exploration was the Weatherwise exhibit on the lower level. Though our time there was short, the exhibit [...]

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What Would Confucius Say Today?

This afternoon in our warm cozy classroom while a chilly wind blew outside, the children studied Confucius.  After hearing about his life as a scholar and philosopher, we took a look at his book of Anaelcts and discussed some of his sayings as well as six Confucian relationships.  In addition to illustrating one of the [...]

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Two Hands Are Better Than One?

It was great to see everyone on our first day back after the holidays.  At the end of the day, everyone happily gathered together for an Open Circle lesson about Cooperation.  The challenge was to tie your shoe using only one hand.  In previous years, the student demonstrating this task enthusiastically began the challenge, but [...]

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