April was a big month for the 6th grade at St. Mary's! We had the opportunity to go on an overnight camping trip at Camp Tekawitha in Shawano. This was a great experience for the students, and the staff at Camp Tek planned a lot of fun team building exercises to prepare the students for their transition into middle school. The students had a lot of fun at camp, and this will be an experience that they will always remember! They students were able to cook their own dinner over a campfire, play Human Foosball, Capture the Flag, plan and host a prayer service, play an Amazing Race game, and spend a lot of quality time together. Our Einstein Kit for fourth quarter is Properties of Matter which is giving us the opportunity to look at composition of elements, compounds, and mixtures. One of the lesson in this unit had the class be investigators to solve a crime. We were given a sample of pen in that was used to sign a check, the problem was the signature did not seem to match the writing on the check. We were given three pens to look at: one from the bank teller, one from the owner of the checkbook, and one from a notorious criminal. We tested the properties of the ink using chromatography paper. After completing our experiment we were able to conclude the criminal forged the signature. In the same lesson, we again used chromatography paper to examine the composition on the colors black, red, green, and brown. The students thought the separation of the colors looked very cool, and when we talked about it we noticed that our base colors were separating into the colors they are made of. We also noticed that red was not separating into different colors, just lighter shades of red. We came to the conclusion that red did not separate into different colors because red is a primary color. The students had a lot of fun with this lesson! Spring has sprung at St. Mary's, and we are loving the sunshine!
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March was a very exciting month for St. Mary's School! It brought us spring, warm weather, snow, Spring Break, new lunch tables, and lots of new learning. In addition, it is the end of 3rd quarter, meaning summer is right around the corner! The students at St. Mary's have been loving the warm weather, and so have the teachers! In Social Studies, we recently finished our chapter on the Ancient Americas. We read a lot about various games these Native American tribes played, and we played one of the games here at St. Mary's. We played a game called "Sticks," each student was given 4 popsicle sticks and had to draw various designs on one side of the stick. They had the option to color the design or just use black marker. Once we were done decorating our sticks, it was time to play the game. It was such a beautiful day out, and the students were going a wonderful job meeting my expectations, so we played the game outside! We played the game in pairs, as well as teams. The objective is to hold all 4 sticks in your hand, and then drop them to the ground. You earn various points based on how the sticks fell, and you play up to 50. The students had a lot of fun playing this game outside, and we have had the chance to play it a couple more times when we have some free time. We were lucky enough to receive new lunch tables for our cafeteria through various donations, and the students love their new tables! They love that the design of the table makes it easier to have conversations and move around the lunchroom. The new tables look great, and have definitely helped to make our cafeteria look much more organized. Spring break caused a lot of excitement at St. Mary's! Everyone was looking forward to vacations, family time, or a little relaxation time! In Math we just ended our chapter during the week leading up to Spring Break, which gave us a chance to play a math game to extend our learning. In our last Math chapter we learned a math "magic trick" using inverse operations. The students loved this "magic trick,' and enjoyed showing it to other students around the school. On our last day before break we played a game called "Mind Reader" in Math class. "Mind Reader" is a partner game where one partner thinks of a 2 or 3 digit number, and their partner has to guess the number they are thinking of. Each time the partner guesses they are told if they had any numbers correct (they are not told which number are correct, just if they have any correct), and if any of the correct numbers are in the right place value spot. Based on these clues the partner has to use process of elimination to figure out their partner's number. The students had a blast playing this game! The last day of the 3rd quarter is Tuesday, April 5. From there we are on to our last quarter, and a lot of fun field trips! 6th grade will be going on an overnight camping trip on Monday and Tuesday, April 25-26. We will then go on our 5th and 6th grade Conservation field trip on Wednesday, May 11 where we visit various Kewaunee County businesses. Finally, or 3rd-6th grade Madison trip will be Friday, May 20.
February was a fun and busy month for the students at St. Mary's! From Catholic Schools Week and Ash Wednesday to Valentine's day and a nice long weekend to enjoy with our families, it has been an eventful month! Catholic Schools Week was a lot of fun for students, parents, and staff! We started CSW with a student led mass on January 31. All of the students did a wonderful job at the mass, and there were some delicious treats at the bake sale following mass. Monday, February 1 was our first day of CSW during school. We celebrated by hosting a bingo game for family members to enjoy with the students at St. Mary's. The turn out for bingo was amazing, and it seems everyone had a great time! In addition to bingo, it was also "Dress Like Your Grandparents Day" and the students had a lot of fun dressing up! Tuesday, February 2 we had our first snow day of the year, which allowed us to spend some extra time with our families. We planned on doing an "Amazing Race: St. Mary's Style" activity the students that day, but due to the snow it was postponed until Wednesday. After our snow day we were back to school for our Badger Sports Park field trip, and the students were really looking forward to this field trip. We were able to do our "Amazing Race" activity before leaving for our field trip, which made for a very fun day! The students had a blast at Badger Sports Park! CSW was wrapped up with the annual Calk Walk hosted by the 6th grade class. The 6th graders loved running the show, and did a fantastic job! Thank you to all of the parents and volunteers for your continued help and support through CSW, and everything you do for us here at St. Mary's. All in all it has been a very fun month! We are now half way through 3rd quarter and headed into spring! We still have a lot of fun ahead of us in the upcoming months!
January was a very busy month for 6th grade. We got back into the swing of things from Christmas break, we finished our science and social studies units and completed projects for each, we had MAPs testing, and it also brought the end of 2nd quarter. Here are the planet models the students created for our solar system science project. Each student picked a planet they wanted to research, create a model that shows the physical characteristics of the planet (Neptune was our most popular planet), and present to the class. The students did a wonderful job with this project and learned a lot of great information about the various planets in our solar system. In Social Studies we finished up our Ancient Greece unit. We did an extension project where each student picked a Greek god or goddess and chose to create a poster or a research paper on their chosen deity. Students had to research the story behind the god or goddess, the symbols that represent them, relatives of the god, and several facts about the deity. Most of the students chose the poster option and had to create a hand drawing of their god or goddess. All of the posters turned out great and had a lot of really great information. There was a large variety of gods and goddess represented in this project, so everyone had the chance to learn something new about these gods. Each of these options required the students to present their projects to the class. We have been working on how to give presentations and worked specifically on eye contact and using our poster/research papers as a reference and not a script. The students did a great job at practicing these techniques, and we will be working on this for the remainder of the year. It's hard to believe how fast this school year is going, and that the school year is already half over! As 3rd and 4th quarter approach we still have a lot of learning to do, and fun fun ahead of us as well! :)
December was a very fun month! From a concert, to caroling, to Christmas cheer, this month flew by! To close out December we had a class Christmas party, we watched a movie, exchanged gifts, made presents for parents, and decorated cookies! It was a great way to end December before leaving for Christmas break! I hope everyone had a fun break! The St. Mary's Children's Choir did a wonderful job spreading the holiday spirit while caroling! This was a fun way to get everyone ready for Christmas! Here is a few pictures from the St. Mary's Christmas concert! In addition to all of the fun Christmas activities through the the year, we also were very busy learning in our classroom. We just finished our first class read aloud, Tuck Everlasting by Natalis Babbit. The story of the Tucks' was a big hit in 6th grade, and as a reward for staying on task and participating in class discussions, we were able to watch Disney's Tuck Everlasting. After watching the movie we discussed the similarities and differences between the book and movie. In Language Arts, each student selected a topic to research, and put all of their research together in an expository writing piece. The students really enjoyed becoming an expert on their topic! Ancient Greece is our current unit in Social Studies. We had to take a bit of a break in the unit because of winter break, but I know everyone is ready to pick up where we left off in our Greece unit! Each student created a drawing of a Greek inspired vase as an intro to the until before break, our vases all look terrific, and are up for display in our classroom! December was very fun, and busy, for all of us with a little time off to relax and enjoy our families. January brings us the second round of MAPS testing, the end of 2nd quarter, and a lot of new learning! In November our book groups came to an end, and the students were asked to create a project of their choice on the book they read. Two groups decided to preform a skit for the class. In the top photo you can see The Giver group performing a scene from their book. The second image is a group performing a scene from the book Bud, Not Buddy. All of the projects were great, and the students enjoyed creating the various projects! In Math we have started discussing how to enlarge images. As part of their homework each student received 2 or 3 2x2 cm images, and their objective was to enlarge the images to 15x15 cm using graph paper. They students did not know what the final enlarged image would be until we put all of our images together. The students did a wonderful job at enlarging the image and putting it all together! October 21 we were lucky to be able to go to the Resch Center for mass. The students, staff, and chaperones really enjoyed themselves at this event. The students represented St. Mary's very well, and had a very fun day in the process. The every in the Resch Center was amazing, you could feel the excitement in the arena as soon as you walked through the doors! While October came to and end so did our first round of book groups. One of our book groups read Where the Red Fern Grows and we decided to close out out book groups by watching the movie. As many of us know, this movie is quite a tear-jerker, but the students absolutely loved it! The class was told we could watch a movie based on one of the group's books if we followed book group expectations. All of the groups worked hard, and as a way to thank them for all of their effort we were able to treat ourselves to a movie and snacks! :)
September 18, the students at St. Mary's participated in a Fun Fit Walk that was sponsored by the Kewaunee Health Department. We learned about various activities we can do to get our heart rate going to stay healthy. We also went for a walk around the Luxemburg community. The students had a lot of fun participating in these activities! The 6th graders finished up their "Decade Projects" and presentations last week. We all learned some great information and had great discussions based on the things we learned. |