April Update

5th Grade:

In April, the fifth grade covered the Southwest Region and all the wonders it has to offer! They completed a Slides project that covered food, landscape, natural resources, and culture for each state in the region. Some students were fascinated with landmarks like the Grand Canyon and food such as Tex Mex, while others decided it was not the region for them! We are currently in the Rocky Mountain region. Each student completed a small research book on two states and taught their class the information that they found. Now, we are working on making state plates. Each student chose a state. They are decorating a paper plate with information and pictures related to their state! Our test on this     region will be next Monday. Following, we will
dive into our last region in the United States.

6th Grade:
This month in the 6th grade we learned about the different cultures and animals in Eastern Africa. We adopted a hippo, Moto Moto. Both classes have enjoyed learning about hippos in Africa and passing around the stuffed animal we received from the World Wildlife Foundation. Recently, we took a break from learning about Africa and have been looking into different world religions. We covered Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. There were many practices that were new to the sixth grade. Great discussion grew from concepts such as reincarnation and the Four Nobel Truths. Moving forward, each student is going to create a book on the five religions that we discussed. Each page will represent a religion and cover the key ideals central to that faith.

7th Grade:
The 7th Grade spent most of the month of April learning about the Constitution and how our government is set up. Through a series of notes and activities we were able cover the branches of government, their responsibilities, the amendments, and the difference between state and local governments. They played a matching game for the amendments. In teams, they matched pictures up to the definitions of different amendments. Additionally, they loved rolling dice to learn about the Electoral College. Each class went through all 50 states to determine which candidate reached 270 Electoral Votes first and was the class president for the day. My hope is that they will remember this activity for next year during the presidential election. We finished the chapter with a review egg hunt which was very active and enjoyable! Now, we are in the middle of Chapter 9 which covers Washington's first years in office. Our test on this chapter will be next Tuesday.