October’s End

Hello Fourth Grade Families!

We hope that you have been enjoying the return to routine! Fourth graders have had a great week of working, learning, and playing. They have earned the treat of eating lunch with their Kindergarten buddies on Fridays! They are really blossoming as leaders and role models to their buddies.

Shabbat Shalom! -The Fourth Grade Team

This week the fourth grade started to work in their workbook “Objects and Stories” and they had a new vocabulary list. Also, we started to learn a new song “Yesh Li Yom Huledet” – “I Have A Birthday”. They had to write a paragraph about their birthday, and we will continue to work on this next week.

This week in Yahadut, fourth graders constructed protective book covers for their Siddurim out of paper bags and duct tape. This activity served not only to help them protect and identify their Siddur out of many, but to help them feel a sense of ownership of their Siddur. The kids did a great job and had a lot of fun with the activity!

In Chumash, we examined the famous Stew Scene in Parshat Toldot, wherein Esav trades his birthright away to Yaakov in exchange for a bowl of lentil stew. The kids took on the role of one of the brothers and retold the scene from that brother’s perspective, in order to identify with Esav and Yaakov and see how they might have each read the situation differently.

Finally, on Friday we enjoyed our first class Shoresh game of the year! Congratulations to all of our fourth grade players!

Shabbat Shalom

It was so wonderful to have a full week of school last week and as I finally got to see the 4th graders twice for science! On Monday, the fourth graders wrapped up their introduction lessons. This means we have discussed what a scientist is, studied some scientists, learned the scientific method, and put the scientific method to the test with some experiments. In our most recent experiment, the fourth graders used pipettes to see how many drops of water they could add to an already filled cup before it overflowed. While many of the original hypotheses were low numbers such as 10 or 30 drops, they were AMAZED to see the results in the 100s and 200s as the water formed a dome far above the lip of the cup. We then circled back to the start of the scientific method to discuss their observations, new questions they have, and new experiments they would want to run to find the answers.
     Last week we also began our first unit… food chemistry! The students began by observing a few different foods (powdered egg whites, dried onions, corn starch, dried apples, coconut flakes, rice, and flour)  and describing their observations to the class. This observation time allowed the students to practice important lab skills. Each food, spoon, and container was labeled with a specific number so students learned the importance of avoiding cross contamination and its affect on our experiments.

This week students began their investigation into starch. Students have learned some basic information about simple and complex carbohydrates from their homework reading and our class discussion. The fourth graders also began learning how to use iodine to identify the presence of starch in food. This investigation will continue next week.