A Great First Day

We had a great first day today!

Wait.... what??? You didn't hear?

Maybe your conversation went something like this when your child got home:

You: How was your first day?
Child: Good
You: What did you do?
Child: Stuff

If you find discussions about your child's day not going very far, these suggestions might help. You may not learn about the content your child learned, but you will get to hear about the really important parts of our day.

If you like these suggestions and want to see more, you can check out the rest of the questions, created by Leslie Means, by clicking here.

Open House Excitement

It was great to see everybody at our Open House on Thursday afternoon! And when I say everybody, I mean everybody; it was a packed room!

I'm hopeful that I got to see everybody and answer any questions that I might have had, but if there's still something on your mind please feel free to drop me an email. I will be checking email Sunday morning (August 26), so I will get back to you at that time.

While coming to Bear Creek can be very overwhelming (for parents and for fourth graders), there are still plenty of exciting things to look forward to. Take a look and see what everybody is most excited about when it comes to starting fourth grade on Monday!

Welcome to the Bair's Den

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Bair's Den! I'm looking forward to have each of you in my class, and I'm very excited to see what this school year has in store for us. It's my hope that all of you will very quickly enjoy the new adventure that is Bear Creek. Please check back here often to see what is happening in our classroom. There is also a page that will help you review the math skills we are learning in class!

All 4th graders each lunch from 12:40 - 1:10, so students are welcome to bring healthy snacks to eat in the morning. I do frequently have snacks for those students who forget or cannot bring their own, and I do appreciate any donations. Favorite snacks in the past have included pretzels, goldfish, cheez-its, and fruit snacks.

Our daily schedule for my homeroom students (students assigned to me for math and science in the morning) looks like this:

9:00 - 11:25 ~ Math and Science with a bathroom and snack break in the middle
11:25 - 12:10 ~ Special
12:10 - 12:40 ~ Clinic / bear time
12:40 - 1:25 ~ Lunch and recess
1:25 - 3:30 ~ ELA classes with Mrs. Horner or Mrs. Towsen
3:30 ~ Dismissal

Our special schedule follows a 6 day cycle and looks like this:

Day 1 ~ Phys Ed
Day 2 ~ Library
Day 3 ~ Technology
Day 4 ~ Phys Ed
Day 5 ~ Music
Day 6 ~ Art

Students will also have the opportunity to play and instrument, and those schedules will also follow a cycle day schedule once they are set by Mrs. Emery and Mr. McLaughlin.

As you can see, we do have Phys Ed the first day of school, so don't forget to wear your sneakers or bring a change of clothing with sneakers if you have a special outfit already picked out for the first day!

I can't wait to begin our year together!

Ag Day 2017

On Thursday, October 12, the 4th graders at Bear Creek braved the chilly, rainy weather to participate in a very special educational experience at the fairgrounds. Students in grades 9 - 12 who are taking classes as part of the agriculture department at the high school presented Agriculture and Environmental Education Day.

The high school students have worked since the beginning of the year to create stations to help the 4th graders learn about farming and our environment. Through the ten different stations, the kids had many hands on opportunities to learn about how people impact their environment and how agriculture is an important part of the Elizabethtown community. The fourth graders were excited to pet many different animals, climb in tractors, try different foods, and participate in different games and activities. Each of these stations provided students with background knowledge that we can using during our science and social studies units this year.

Please enjoy these pictures of our morning at the fairgrounds and ask your child to tell you about their favorite part of the day!

Thinking Like Mathematicians

Before jumping in the 4th grade math curriculum, everybody in the Bair's Den is trying to get into the right frame of mind to think like a mathematician. We are trying to break some big myths that many people think about math. These myths include:

• Some people are math people and are really great at math, and some people just aren't math people and will never be good at math.
• Being good at math means you can solve problems fast.
• Math is only about solving problems - number are the most important part of math.

To break these myths, we have been challenging ourselves with a variety of different math activities that haven't involved numbers at all, although they have involved some very famous math theories and conjectures.

Our challenges so far included finding the fewest number of squares in an 11 x 13 rectangle and creating a coordinate grid comparing different objects. Our current challenge showed us this pattern:

Using these first four figures, we had to figure out how the pattern grew. Some of us saw it growing vertically on the left, others saw it growing diagonally on the right. Others saw rows being added to the bottom. After we talked about the different ways it grew we began working on these three questions:

• What would figure 10 look like, and how many squares would it have?
• What would figure 55 look like, and how many squares would it have?
• Can you use exactly 190 blocks to make this figure?

Here's some examples of the work friends did to try to solve this challenge:

We're excited to keep working on this challenge to see if we can figure out the answers today!

 

As we have been working on these different challenges, we've also been thinking about and applying the math practice standards:

These practices focus on the different goals for how we think and act in math. Each student picked one of these practices to be their math goal for the first part of the year, and they made a plan about how they'd like to meet their goal. We're all really excited to see if we can reach our goals and improve our math thinking!

Being Scientists

Last week we started talking about the scientific process, and today we started our science unit on water systems. This unit will include different types of bodies of water and the water cycle. In order to help us understand the scientific process, we are looking at each part very closely. We started with making observations and asking questions.

On Friday, the kids had the opportunity to practice this by writing down some observations and questions they had about Bear Creek in their science journals. Today, we went outside to our beautiful wetlands and made some observations about the bodies of water and the ecosystem.

Making observations of the large pond

Checking out the small pond

I was able to get the morning crew in action, but there was too much excitement in the afternoon! During our observations, the afternoon group spotted a turtle sunning itself on a log in the large pond, and we also had the chance to see a great blue heron fly from a spot right in front of us to another spot across the pond! Many of us were shocked about how big it was, and we had a few exclamations of, "It's a pterodactyl!" and, "It's a crane!" Herons are very skittish, so it's pretty amazing this one hung around and put on such a show for us! We are very excited to get back out and see what other observations we can make.

Making observations: looking at things in the world around you and noticing even the smallest details
Asking questions: asking questions about why things happen and what things are

Open House Excitement

It was great meeting all of my new friends this afternoon! If you couldn't make it, don't worry. You will have a chance to make your name tag, pick your seat, and get your homework folder on Monday morning.

To those of you who asked question, we will definitely have a chance to talk about them on Monday and Tuesday. If you still have more, bring them along! I am here to answer your questions and help you feel better about Bear Creek and 4th grade.

Is there something you're looking forward to? Here are the things that have some of our friends excited for 4th grade:

I hope you have something you're excited about, too!! Don't forget! Phys Ed on Monday! Wear or bring those sneakers. :)

Welcome to the Bair's Den

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Bair's Den! I'm looking forward to have each of you in my class, and I'm very excited to see what this school year has in store for us. It's my hope that all of you will very quickly enjoy the new adventure that is Bear Creek. Please check back here often to see what is happening in our classroom. There is also a page that will help you review the math skills we are learning in class!

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Bair's Den! I'm looking forward to have each of you in my class, and I'm very excited to see what this school year has in store for us. It's my hope that all of you will very quickly enjoy the new adventure that is Bear Creek. Please check back here often to see what is happening in our classroom. There is also a page that will help you review the math skills we are learning in class!

All 4th graders each lunch from 12:40 - 1:10, so students are welcome to bring healthy snacks to eat in the morning. Please keep in mind that we have an apple allergy in the morning and a peanut allergy in the afternoon, so we would like to limit snacks that have those items in them. I do frequently have snacks for those students who forget or cannot bring their own, and I do appreciate any donations. Favorite snacks in the past have included pretzels, goldfish, cheez-its, and fruit snacks.

Our daily schedule for my homeroom students (students assigned to me for math and science in the morning) looks like this:

9:00 - 11:25 ~ Math and Science with a bathroom and snack break in the middle
11:25 - 12:10 ~ Special
12:10 - 12:40 ~ Clinic / bear time
12:40 - 1:25 ~ Lunch and recess
1:25 - 3:30 ~ ELA classes with Mrs. Horner or Mrs. Towsen
3:30 ~ Dismissal

Our special schedule follows a 6 day cycle and looks like this:

Day 1 ~ Phys Ed
Day 2 ~ Library
Day 3 ~ Technology
Day 4 ~ Phys Ed
Day 5 ~ Music
Day 6 ~ Art

Students will also have the opportunity to play and instrument, and those schedules will also follow a cycle day schedule once they are set by Mrs. Emery and Mr. McLaughlin.

As you can see, we do have Phys Ed the first day of school, so don't forget to wear your sneakers or bring a change of clothing with sneakers if you have a special outfit already picked out for the first day!

I'm hoping that you will be able to come and join me for an Open House at Bear Creek on Thursday, August 24 from 2:00 - 3:30. Come and see the school, visit your classroom, make your nametage, and meet some new friends!

I can't wait to begin our year together!

Summer Fun

It's hard to believe we are half way through our summer vacation! Where is the time going? I hope you have all had some amazing adventures! If you're looking for more things to do, here are some simple suggestions to have fun and grow your brain this summer!

Skype with a Scientist

Over the last month, both of the classes had the opportunity to participate in a program called, "Skype with a Scientist" that I discovered online. This program matches classes with scientists who talk about what it's like to be a scientists studying in their particular field.

The Bair's Den AM had the opportunity to Skype with Kathy, a marine biologist who studies coral reefs and sponges. She is particularly interested in discovering a way to find out corals are sick earlier than people can now to help protect our fragile coral reef ecosystems. You can check out some photos of the work she is doing by clicking here and checking out these pictures from one of her research trips.

The Bair's Den PM had the opportunity to Skype with Sara, a environmental scientist who is studying the effect of climate change in polar regions. She shared a very interesting presentation with us, and she even incorporated everybody's animal from their ecosystem projects into her presentations!

Sara talking about how our animals fit into a food web and what happen if those animals disappear.

We watched her on the big screen, and she could see us from Mrs. Bair's computer.

It was really surprising to hear how climate change affects every animal!

The AM class had the chance to ask questions and asked Kathy about her favorite sea creatures she's studied, how she uses the scientific process every day, what kinds of tools she uses and how she collects data. The PM class had questions all ready, but we didn't get the chance to ask Sara our questions that day. We are hoping to Skype with her again after the PSSAs are over.

We are really thankful that we had the opportunity to meet these amazing women, and it was really interesting to hear how they are using the same process we have learned about in our class!

Being Scientists

This week we started our unit on the scientific process, so we're learning the steps scientists use to complete scientific experiments. We started by talking about how scientists use their observation skills to notice things in the world around them and to help them make a hypothesis. We have been putting our observations skills to keen use by watching the bald eagles and their newly hatched eaglets!

You can check out the live eagle cam here!

Some of the observations we've made so far are:

• The eagles don't throw up the food for the babies. They just feed them small pieces.
• The eaglets peep a LOT!
• The parent eagles don't leave the nest for very long.
• They eat mostly fish, but they did eat a duck or a goose the other day.
• Eaglets are white and fluffy when they hatch.
• It takes a long time for an eaglet to hatch - several hours to almost a whole day!
• Eaglets are very wiggly, but they also sleep a lot.
• It's hard for eaglets to sit up when they first hatch, but they get good at it pretty quickly.

We are excited to see more of what we've learned about ecosystem in action as the eaglets, hopefully, grow up. But we know there could be some sad lessons about nature, too. We're keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best!

Here are some screen shots of the eagle family!

The parents sitting on the eggs on a rainy day

Daddy eagle checking the baby and the hatching egg. The hole is called a pip, and then the egg cracks from there.

The two eaglets waiting for mom or dad to come back from hunting

Ecosystem Expo

Thursday, March 9 was a very exciting day for us. After weeks of learning about ecosystems and a week of hard work creating ecosystems, we had the opportunity to present our animals and their ecosystems to friends and family. The students did an amazing job teaching our visitors about abiotic and biotic parts of an ecosystem and teaching everybody about the living things. I am so proud of everybody's hard work and thankful that everybody was able to come and share in our successes.

If you weren't able to attend, it's okay! Everybody will be bringing their boxes home on Monday, along with an interview sheet. You can conduct your child's interview at home just like we did here at school. In the meantime, enjoy these photos from the event!

Owl Pellets

Over the last few weeks, we have been learning about ecosystems. An ecosystem is the interaction between all biotic (living) and nonliving (abiotic) things in an environment. We learned that every ecosystem, no matter where it is located, has four abiotic things. Ask your child what these 4 things are!

Once the abiotic things are in place, the living things of every ecosystem starts with the producers - a fancy name for plants. Plants are called producers because they produce their own food. We learned about this when we learned about photosynthesis. Producers are the key to every ecosystem because they have all of the energy. Once you have producers growing, then you can see consumers in an ecosystem. There are also four kinds of consumers! Ask your child to tell you about herbivores, omnivores, carnivores, and scavengers and what they eat.

With all of the living things in place, we can start to talk about food chains and how energy is passed through a chain so that the living things can survive. We have also talked about what would happen if one part of the chain was broken because a living thing became extinct. That's where the energy stops, and it can have drastic effects on all of the other parts of the chain!

In order to look more closely at food chains, we did a science experiment on Friday to answer the question, "What animals are part of an owl's food chain?" By examining owl pellets, we were able to find out that owls eat a variety of rodents and even other small birds. We had a great time making a connection between what we've been learning and the real world, and we are looking forward to building our own ecosystems the next two week!

Please enjoy this slideshow of us exploring our owl pellets!

Wetlands Projects

Over the course of the last month, we have been learning about the importance of wetlands to people, animals, and the environment. The kids were presented with a situation: should we protect the wetlands at Bear Creek, or should we build playgrounds where the wetlands currently stand. To help the kids make an informed choice, we also researched the benefits of exercise on kids' brains and bodies.

Once we learned about wetlands and the benefits of exercise, the kids chose a claim. Would they protect the wetlands or would the choose to build a playground? The students overwhelmingly chose to protect the wetlands, but we did have some people choose to build the playgrounds. Once they decided upon their claim, they had to figure out how they would get their message across to our audience. Students chose letters, blog posts / articles, books, podcasts, movies, SmartAmp presentations, and posters. They have been working hard to polish these presentations so that they will convince you to agree with their claim.

Now it's your turn to choose! You can follow the links to our kidblog sites or check out the updates to this post, to gather your information. Then we'd like you to vote. Will you choose to protect the wetlands, or will you choose to build more playgrounds? The choice is yours!

Here are the links to follow:

• STEM Students who have Mrs. Horner and Mrs. Bair
• Mrs. Bair's Homeroom who have Mrs. Towsen in the afternoon
• Mrs. Towsen's Homeroom who have Mrs. Bair in the afternoon

You can listen to some podcasts right here!

Check out Gabe's podcast in support of building playgrounds:

Listen to Haley support the wetlands:

Brooke supports saving the wetlands:

Gabe S. threw his support behind the wetlands:

Nick believes we should save the wetlands:

Sarah thinks we should save the wetlands, too:

You can also watch this very entertaining movie by Toren!

And here is an informative and entertaining video by Olivia!

Check back often because more projects will be added throughout the week. Once you feel as though you have the information you need, please cast your vote:

Comparing Numbers - AM Class

Over the last few weeks, we have been trying to answer the question, "What do numbers mean?" To answer this question, we have focused on learning the different places digits can "park" in, how their value changes in each place, and how to tell the differences between numbers.

To demonstrate their knowledge the Bair's Den AM Class used the Show Me app to complete their comparing and ordering assessments. This app allowed everybody to talk about their thinking as they were doing the work. While not all of the Show Mes are posted, you can view several of them by visiting our class's Show Me page. You can find your child's work by looking for their name. Feel free to ask us any questions about our projects.

Comparing Numbers - AM Class

Over the last few weeks, we have been trying to answer the question, "What do numbers mean?" To answer this question, we have focused on learning the different places digits can "park" in, how their value changes in each place, and how to tell the differences between numbers.

To demonstrate their knowledge the Bair's Den AM Class used the Show Me app to complete their comparing and ordering assessments. This app allowed everybody to talk about their thinking as they were doing the work. While not all of the Show Mes are posted, you can view several of them by visiting our class's Show Me page. You can find your child's work by looking for their name. Feel free to ask us any questions about our projects.

Be on the look out for the PM Class's slideshows coming soon!

School Spirit and Word of the Week

This week's word of the week is thoughtful. Fourth grade has been having some trouble at times when teachers aren't around, so we are working together to be more thoughtful about our words and our actions.

On Monday we talked about this quote from Margaret Meade, a famous anthropologist during the 1960's:

We changed the word citizens to students, and we changed the word world to school. And then we talked about how things might change if we were thoughtful about how we talked to each other and if we were thoughtful about our actions. We talked about how sometimes it's hard to do the right thing when others aren't, and we talked about how good it feels when you take the time to do something, like pick up trash in the hallway or help a friend, just because it's the right thing to do. This week we are all focusing on being thoughtful about our words and actions, and hopefully we will be the group to make that difference here at Bear Creek.

Last week, we participated in five different school spirit days to celebrate Red Ribbon Week. These days helped us have some fun, show our school spirit, and also bring awareness to the fact that drugs and alcohol aren't the answer to problems when we get older. Again, we need to be all of our words of the week: Brave, Responsible, Helpful, Adaptable, and Thoughtful. If we continue to live these words, we will be able to avoid situations where we might encounter drugs and alcohol.

Our favorite of the week was Crazy Hair Day! Check out our pictures --- even the teachers got in on the fun!!

School Spirit and Word of the Week

This week's word of the week is thoughtful. Fourth grade has been having some trouble at times when teachers aren't around, so we are working together to be more thoughtful about our words and our actions.

On Monday we talked about this quote from Margaret Meade, a famous anthropologist during the 1960's:

We changed the word citizens to students, and we changed the word world to school. And then we talked about how things might change if we were thoughtful about how we talked to each other and if we were thoughtful about our actions. We talked about how sometimes it's hard to do the right thing when others aren't, and we talked about how good it feels when you take the time to do something, like pick up trash in the hallway or help a friend, just because it's the right thing to do. This week we are all focusing on being thoughtful about our words and actions, and hopefully we will be the group to make that difference here at Bear Creek.

Last week, we participated in five different school spirit days to celebrate Red Ribbon Week. These days helped us have some fun, show our school spirit, and also bring awareness to the fact that drugs and alcohol aren't the answer to problems when we get older. Again, we need to be all of our words of the week: Brave, Responsible, Helpful, Adaptable, and Thoughtful. If we continue to live these words, we will be able to avoid situations where we might encounter drugs and alcohol.

Our favorite of the week was Crazy Hair Day! Check out our pictures --- even the teachers got in on the fun!!

Multiplication Suggestions

Today everybody moved on to practicing multiplication facts. While each student received flashcards for their current level, you aren't expected to do flashcards every night. Here are some fun ways to practice your facts.

1. The Dice Game: Get two dice, and use masking tape to cover the numbers on one die. Write the numbers 7-12 on that die. Roll the dice and multiply the two numbers together. The highest product gets a point. The first person to 15 points wins!

2. Multiplication War: Played like regular war, but you flip two cards instead of one. Every card is face value, while jacks, queens, and kings are worth 10. The person with the highest product wins the cards. If the products are equal, do "I De-Clare War" and add the 4 cards together. The highest sum gets all cards.

3. Egg Carton Game: Get an empty egg carton and number the spots 1-12. Add two pennies, and close the lid. Shake the carton. Open it up and multiply the numbers where the pennies landed.

4. Skip Counting: Multiplication is really all about skip counting the multiples of a number. Have your child practice skip counting in any way. You can actually make them skip while they count by their fact number (2, 4, 6, 8, 10.....), they can write / paint / draw their multiples when skip counting, or if you're looking for some messy fun you can write the skip counting in shaving cream! Skip counting is a great strategy that the kids can use during their fact tests.

These are four simple ways to get started reviewing or practicing those facts. If you have any great ideas you'd like to share, please let me know and we'll add them to the list.

We Are Water

We started off the school year learning about fresh and salt water bodies of water, and then we learned that fresh water bodies of water can be either lentic systems (bodies of water that stand still) or lotic systems (bodies of water that move from one place to another). But a huge question remained. Where exactly does all of the water come from?? How do we get all of that water into those bodies of water?

This week we started answering those questions by starting our unit on the water cycle. We learned that precipitation is water that falls from the sky, and it falls in the form of rain, snow, sleet or hail. Once it falls to the earth's surface, precipitation can become runoff, it can be part of a collection (as a puddle or one of our bodies of water), or it can become ground water.

Take a look at the videos below. The students in the Bair's Den became water drops and experienced runoff and collection. Ask your child to explain the process to you while you watch!

The Bair's Den AM - Runoff and Collection

The Bair's Den PM - Runoff and Collection