November 2012
1 post
The Book Fair is Open!
Dates: November 29 to December 5, 2012
Where: In the Library
Times: At Lunch Recess and After School until 4:00 each day.
Extended Hours:
Parent Breakfast Sale Friday, November 30 from 8:45 to 10:30
Wednesday, December 5, 2012 2:30 until 6:00
Book Fair Closes 6:00 Wednesday December 5!
Come check us out!!
October 2012
6 posts
Fall/Winter Gardening
Over the past week, the fourth graders have been preparing for our fall/winter planting season. They tilled the garden beds and amended the soil with organic fertilizer (“Chickety Doo Doo” has to be the BEST name ever for fertilizer!). Today, they planted some flower seeds (marigolds and nasturtiums) around the edges of the garden beds as rabbit deterrents. Next week, we will plant a...
Meet Juliana!
Last year, Lisa D. connected with an organization called Light in Africa, founded and run by a British woman named Mama Lynn, which helps homeless and orphaned children in Tanzania. This year, we are continuing this relationship. This week, the fourth graders “met” a teenager named Juliana, who was born with disfigured legs. Lisa met Juliana in real life during her trip to Tanzania...
California Relief Maps
Before we learn about California’s fascinating history, we are learning about its geography. In order to better understand our state’s four main regions, we are making relief maps. The fourth graders are having to look carefully and study our classroom maps to make sure that their maps are accurate.
We enjoyed looking at real historical maps last week at the La Jolla Map and...
Math Games
Playing math games is a fun way to practice our skills. Here the fourth graders are rolling dice and making rectangles, calculating the area of the rectangles using multiplication facts, trying to use their spacial skills to fit the rectangles together so that there is no empty space on their graph paper, and then practicing multi-digit addition by adding up all the areas.
Painting Birdhouses
Sometimes it’s fun to do something just for fun! We enjoyed painting colorful birdhouses to decorate our classroom windows!
Reading Buddies
Connecting with our second grade reading buddies each week is something the fourth graders look forward to! We do a variety of activities; recently we’ve shared joke books with each other and worked on preparing readers’ theaters (and making puppets) that the groups will present next week. Reading buddies is an opportunity to create cross-grade connections, and it gives the fourth...
September 2012
1 post
Welcome to a new school year!
This blog is the ongoing site for the TCS Fourth Grade. Check back frequently for pictures and information about our activities and learning.
One of the exciting things we do in fourth grade is gardening. Last year, we started a relationship with Suzie’s Farm and visited their location in south county. Recently, the Union Tribune printed an article highlighting the farm. Going there is...
May 2012
13 posts
TCS is helping the Monarch School!
The fourth graders and their global buddies in Lisa D.’s Kindergarten are doing one last community service project this school year: helping the Monarch School! We watched the video from The Ellen Show and discussed how the Monarch School helps local children affected by homelessness. Yesterday, we looked at the school’s “Wish List,” and talked about how, when helping...
Homophone Storyboards
Here are a few of the finished homophone storyboards we’ve been working on! The homophone sets on each card are underlined.
Learning "Scratch"
For the past two weeks, the fourth graders have been learning the program “Scratch” during technology time. Some of them already knew a little about it, and others were learning for the first time. Yesterday, we buddied up with the other fourth grade and made some creative animated projects. Eighth grader Sherif came and was our mentor!
Fun Night - Registration Closes Tonight!
Fun Night is this Saturday, May 19th! It promises to be a great parents’ night out with wonderful auction items, food, and entertainment. You won’t want to miss it!
TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO RSVP AND REGISTER. Get your ticket today: https://tcslj.ejoinme.org/MyEvents/FunNight2012TheRoaring20sandAllThatJaz/FunNight2012Registration/tabid/352458/Default.aspx
Bake Sale Tomorrow!
Lisa D.’s Connecting Communities class is having their FINAL BAKE SALE tomorrow at 3:15pm under the Big Tree. All items will be between $0.50 and $1.00. Please encourage your students to bring their money to support the Monarch School, a school for homeless children in San Diego.
For more info on the Monarch school check out the video below for the Ellen Show.
Lisa says, “Thanks so...
Sacramento T-Shirts!
I got the Sacramento t-shirts this afternoon, and Cause Ignitors did a fabulous job! I will send your child’s home tomorrow. Thanks to Jenny Dunne for coordinating this effort - we will look great as a group in our fun shirts!
Literature Circles
In this round of literature circles, students chose from four books:
The Giant Rat of Sumatra (pirates in San Diego during the 1800s)
A Jar of Dreams (Japanese immigrants during the Great Depression)
Esperanza Rising (Mexican immigrants during the Great Depression)
There’s an Owl in the Shower (a northern California logging family makes an unlikely friend: a spotted owl)
We will wrap up...
Transcontinental Railroad
When we visit Sacramento later this week, we will get to go to the Railroad Museum and see *real* locomotives from different eras in California history. For now, we are studying the impact the railroad had on populating California, and the people who built it. We read two books about Chinese immigrants during the 1850s and 60s and learned about what hard workers they were and how much prejudice...
Analogy Books and Homophone Storyboards
Our grammar study during the last few weeks has included learning about analogies and homophones. The fourth graders created their own Analogy Books using analogy pairs that they made up. The books were so much fun because everyone included analogies that they drew from their interests (basketball, gymnastics, animals, video games, etc.). Right now, they are in the middle of creating storyboards...
Math - Fractions and Decimals
For the last few weeks, we have been exploring fractions and decimals: how to add/subtract them, multiply/divide them, compare them, and convert them. Here is some of our groupwork that we shared.
We practiced making equivalent fractions and each team tried to make as many as they could!
If you build it...
The list of things the fourth graders are able to do independently continues to grow, and last week they added “putting together a garden bed” to their list of accomplishments! With quite a bit of elbow grease and cooperation (and virtually no help from me), they figured out how to assemble a 4x4’ garden bed (that was supposed to require a power drill, mind you!). Putting...
Sock Hop 2012!
It was a gorgeous day to shake and shimmy and rock around the clock!
Too bad no one liked the ice cream sandwiches. ;)
Ever met a real gold miner? We have!
Recently, we welcomed Cody’s grandfather into our classroom for a wonderfully entertaining and educational presentation about his hobby: gold mining! You wouldn’t believe his stories of adventure and close calls! He brought in old pictures of Cody’s family on ranches, lots of equipment that he uses in his mining adventures, and even real gold!
April 2012
14 posts
Helping our community, one pair of shoes at a...
The TCS shoe drive in honor of One Day Without Shoes was very successful! Last week with our Kindergarten Buddies, we sorted and counted the donated shoes. The fourth graders helped the kindergarteners arrange the shoes in groups of 10, and then we estimated the total number. By counting groups of 10, the fourth graders discovered that we had 290 pairs of shoes that day! In total, after a few more...
Rocks and Minerals Study in Science
Fourth grade has been studying earth science with Kim this semester. The topics included in this unit are rocks, minerals, and mining. Here is a note from Kim about what they’ve been doing!
Students have learned the differences between rocks and minerals, how to classify minerals according to various characteristics, and the rock cycle. Students also learned about the periodic...
Welcome to TCS, worms!
What’s new in the garden? Worms! Well, actually, MORE worms. Today, we are installing “worm composting towers” in our garden beds. We will drop our compost scraps down the pipe, and the worms will eat the scraps, crawl out to fertilize our gardens directly with their casings (the polite word for worm poop!), and then crawl back into the tube for more food. If you’d like...
La Jolla Olympics
A note from Todd: The La Jolla Olympics are scheduled for Sunday May 20th. That will be at the tail end of a crazy few days for the TCS fourth grade - our Sacramento trip is the 17th-18th, Fun Night is the 19th, and then the Olympics are on the 19th! Rest up and get ready for the fun!
Springtime Garden!
Our California poppies have bloomed! Happy spring!
Some of our peas dried, so we planted them… We are truly experiencing the cycle of the natural world: from seed to plant, to seed again, and back to plant (with a little eating in there too, of course)!
What a wonderful surprise! Over break, the ground cover on the hill bloomed, and we were so excited to see the blanket of purple...
Green Day at TCS - This Friday!
In honor of Earth Day, we will be celebrating “Green Day” at TCS this Friday, April 20. In the classroom, we have been reading and learning about our environment and having conversations during Morning Meeting. Have you ever heard of “vampire power use”? Ask your fourth grader what it is! Today we read a book called “The Adventures of an Aluminum Can,” a story...
Silly Sentences: Parts of Speech
To reinforce what we’ve learned about the parts of speech, the fourth graders each made a book of “Silly Sentences.” They each wrote four sentences, each with a noun, verb, adjective, prepositional phrase, and adverb, on strips of paper according to part of speech (all adjectives on one color, etc.). Then they made the strips into a flip book that they could use to create silly...
2012-2013 New Family Mentorship Program: Mentors...
Do you recall being a new family at TCS? The New Family Mentorship Program (formerly called the New Family Ambassador Program) is designed to support the newest members of our TCS community. By matching new families with current families (preferably with children in the same class and/or grade level), a mentor serves as an important information resource and a warm welcome to TCS. If we can recruit...
Beach Clean Up for TCS Green Day
On Friday, April 20, we will be doing a school-wide “community clean up”. Some classes will work on beautifying our campus, and others will walk to La Jolla Shores to clean up our local beach. The fourth graders will be partnering with the first graders and walking down to the shores in the morning for the beach clean-up. The permission slip is in your child’s box. Since we are...
Farm-to-Table Feast!
After our trip to the farm, we celebrated with a farm-to-table feast using some items we’d picked at Suzie’s Farm, some items from our own TCS garden, and several organic items from our local market. Yum! At Suzie’s, we learned about using all the edible parts of a plant, so we not only ate cooked beets, we also ate sauteed beet greens, which were delicious! We ate outside, near...
Our Visit to Suzie's Farm and Wild Willow Farm
The fourth graders have been gardening with the fifth graders all year long, and on Wednesday we went together to visit two working farms, Suzie’s Farm and Wild Willow Farm. It was an amazing day! At Suzie’s Farm, we walked through acres of fields and harvested beets, purple and orange carrots, and turnips. We sampled what we picked and even tried some new things, like flowers! Yum!...
Happy Earth Month!
We will be celebrating our first “Green Day” at TCS later this month, and all month long we’ll be learning how we can take good care of our planet. We started this morning with a discussion about some surprising facts, like…
Did you know that the world consumes more than one million plastic bags per minute?
We are going to be discovering some of the problems these bags...
One Day Without Shoes - Friday, April 6
One Day Without Shoes - Barefoot Day at TCS! What is One Day Without Shoes? The day we spread awareness of the impact a pair of shoes can have on a child’s life by taking off our own. One Day Without Shoes is an annual event hosted by TOMS Shoes in which millions of people from around the world take off their shoes for a few minutes, for a few hours, or for an entire day and become a part...
March 2012
21 posts
School Policies: A Reminder from Brian
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news… but Brian sent out a note to faculty reminding us to remind families that dogs are not allowed on campus. Such a bummer! I will miss my new furry friends who have been visiting lately! Also, riding bikes, skateboards and zuca bags is not allowed on campus. Thanks for your cooperation!
Happy Persian New Year!
Thanks to Debbie Oakes, the fourth graders got to learn about Persian New Year as well as some Persian culture and history yesterday. We learned about some significant symbols of the celebration and got to hold some interesting family heirlooms. Debbie also shared part of a History Channel show about the amazing contributions Persian culture made to technology. And, of course, the children (and I)...
Spring Sing is TOMORROW!
Please join us for a celebration of musical LEGENDS!
Morning show: 9am
Afternoon show: 2pm
If you can help us put zombie makeup on the children before either show, please let me know!
Reminder: Your child has his/her zombie shirt at school and should wear dark colored long pants and a neutral color (white or black) shirt as an undershirt.
Hope to see you tomorrow!
Last Gold Rush Project
This week and next, the fourth graders are working on their last Gold Rush project. For the past five weeks or so, they have been using a variety of resources to do research about one aspect of gold. Some topics they have chosen are the history of gold, gold rushes in other parts of the US and the world, and influential or infamous people of the gold rush. Right now, they are working on a project...
Broccoli, our new favorite veggie!
Yesterday was the big day - we harvested the broccoli that we grew from seeds! After cooking it, we taste tested it… And everyone loved it!
Next harvest: peas!
Bulbs!
Broccoli before…
Broccoli after… Yum!
Gold Rush Documentary and Benefit Project
The fourth graders did a fabulous job of acting in and putting together an informative film about the Gold Rush. We presented it to a packed house, including our TCS community and families, last week. Beforehand, we hosted a very successful snack sale to benefit our friends at Marshall Elementary who are going on a trip to learn about the Gold Rush.
On Monday, we visited Marshall Elementary to...
Nature and Children - Check out this PBS show and...
A TCS parent shared this upcoming program with the staff, and I thought I’d pass along the information to you. I will be watching! It looks fascinating, and I am so grateful that our TCS children have such beautiful outdoor areas to use on a daily basis as well as the time to enjoy them. Outdoor learning and environmental education are close to my heart, and that is one of the many reasons...
Grammar Fun
In the past few weeks, we’ve been studying grammar, starting with the parts of speech. We are making collages of words and pictures that describe each part of speech; so far we’ve learned about nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Coming soon: pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections! We even got out the classic favorite, School House Rock: Grammar Rock, and I think...
Gold Rush Documentary
Howdy! We loved seeing so many friendly faces in the audience for our Gold Rush Documentary and Songs Presentation today. If you weren’t able to make it, I hope to be able to post the documentary on Vimeo along with the wonderful trailer that Malin made. We are so excited to announce that we made over $550 in donations just today - what a wonderful show of community and support for our...
Pi Day - March 14!
3.14159… And on to infinity! Here are some photos from our fourth grade celebration of Pi Day!
We did a Pi Parade around campus holding the first 32 digits of the number. Here we are on the blacktop holding our digits!
Lots of fourth graders challenged themselves to learn as many digits of pi as they could! Here they are enjoying the friendly competition.
Lots of round items -...
Thank you!
To everyone who made Teacher Appreciation Days amazing… Thank you!!! I felt very loved by all of you and your sweet children! Along with all of the cards, flowers, and treats on Thursday and Friday, our Friday afternoon party was a wonderful way to relax, wrap up the week, and celebrate before the weekend - thanks to Laure for coordinating and to the rest of the families who brought in yummy...
Fresh IS Best!
“These are the BEST PEAS I’VE EVER TASTED!!!” That was the consensus of the fourth graders after we ate our first peas of the season straight off the vine (okay, we washed them, but we really did eat them within 3 minutes of picking them!). It’s very exciting and motivating to finally get to taste the fruits of our labor!
Spring Sing Update and Information
Zombie Shirts: Lauren has decided that she will provide the shirts for the fourth graders to “zombify,” so you don’t need to send one in.
Spring Sing Dates:
Wednesday, March 28 at 10:45am Spring Sing Rehearsal 1
Thursday, March 29 at 8:45am Spring Sing Rehearsal 2
Friday, March 30 at 9:00am and 2:00pm SPRING SING PERFORMANCES
TCS to Tanzania!
During February, the fourth graders and their Global Buddies in Lisa D.’s kindergarten collected and organized supplies for the Mbahe School in Tanzania. We sent Lisa on her trip with lots of pencils, colored pencils, erasers, and pencil sharpeners, which were gratefully accepted by the African students. Below are some pictures of the collecting and organizing effort.
Helping Local Fourth Grade Friends
We have not only been busy learning about and helping friends overseas in Africa; we are also doing community service closer to home. We are helping other fourth graders right here in San Diego! The 100+ fourth graders at Marshall Elementary in City Heights (where Denise used to teach) are going on an overnight Gold Rush trip to Indian Hills Camp in Jamul, and their families cannot afford to pay...
