History & Geography

Our weekly objectives were to:

• Understand how the Ming dynasty began.
• Describe the Forbidden City.
• Recognize the achievements of Zheng He, the Admiral of the Western Seas.
• Explain the reasons for the decline of the Ming dynasty and the Manchu takeover.
• Understand Qianlong´s unusual views on one way trade with other countries.
• Recognize how opium caused China to go to war with Great Britain and France, as well as how the use of opium affected Chinese society.
• Identify factors that contributed to the decline of the Chinese empire.

• Explain why immigrants came to the American colonies.
• List the factors that began to unify the diverse population of American colonies.

We finished up our unit on Ancient China.  We had a fun end of unit celebration with a tea party, writing caligraphy Chinese characters, and reading our horoscopes.  We also began the next unit which is on the  American Revolution.

Mathematics w/Laura

La lectura

This week the students completed their Sal project.  Thank you to everyone who was able to come share that with us.  If anyone has a video Id love to have a copy so I can share it with other parents and with the kiddos.

This week we began doing little daily comprehension stories.  These stories are only about one paragraph long but have advanced vocabulary and grammar (to their level). They have been very quick to read these and then answer the 5 comprehension questions. They are required to use the strategy of underlining their answers in the paragraph. These are good strategies and vocabulary/grammar building activities that we are using each day.  They like them too!

Ciencias

This week the students were assessed on their final investigation: Natural resources.  They were given a menu of tasks to choose from in order to show their knowledge of their knowledge of the investigation. This was a fun way to be assessed!

We also began our newest investigation: Environments.

All living things depend on the conditions in their environment. The study of the relationships between one organism and its environment builds knowledge of all organisms. With this knowledge comes an awareness of limits. Changes in an environment can be hard on organisms. Such knowledge is important because humans can change environments. To do so without awareness of possible consequences can lead to disasters. The Environments Module consists of six investigations that introduce students to these basic concepts in environmental biology.

Specialists

Art with Ms. Kelly

Our art projects this month were

Clay Masks with Miss Karen

LOVE Designs

Learn about Robert Indiana’s LOVE designs and sculptures.

Use letters and patterns to create artwork.

Portraits in the style of Picasso

Learn about the different styles of portraits created by Picasso.

Create an abstract portrait by using various diagonal lines from folded paper.

Add colors and patterns to the portrait.

The students designed some very colorful, creative portraits!