International Bazaar Donation

Tah dah!! It's official.......the Class of 2026 made $3116.00 from the International Bazaar this year!

They have voted to split the money three ways in order to make donations of $1040.00 to Water for South Sudan, The Malala Fund and Heifer International.

If you are interested, please click on the websites below to visit the websites of these organizations.

Congratulations to the Fourth Grade girls for their outstanding work and humanity, and many thanks to the parents for all their help! Have a wonderful summer.

Water for South Sudan

The Malala Fund

Heifer International

Summer Reading

At this time of the year, many parents want to know how to encourage their children to continue to read over the summer. Here are some worthwhile tips from author Pernille Ripp as posted on the Nerdy Book Club blog that are worth passing along!

What can parents and caregivers do to help kids stay reading over the summer?

 Have your own to-be-read list.  Go book shopping with your kids and create a list of books you all hope to read this summer.  Browse the displays at the library or at book stores, look up the bestseller lists to see what is hot in literature right now.  Count down the days together for that sequel or amazing new book to be released. Build excitement for the act of reading together.

 Visit places where books are present.  Build visits into the library, bookstores or even friends’ houses where there are books visible into your summer plans.  Seeing books within reach often entices reading and there is something about the promise of a brand-new crisp book that cannot help but be exciting.  And browse online as well. What are people sharing on the #BookADay thread? Which books are being shared on Instagram under hashtags like the one I use (#pernillerecommends)?

 Make it social.  One of the biggest joys of summer is hanging out with people, so why not add books to it?  Perhaps every Sunday night is declared “Books and milkshakes” at your house? Perhaps you create book picnics or host a book club yourself.  Perhaps you engage in a friendly competition with each other to see who will finish their book first, no cheating. Reading can be a social event, don’t force it to be solitary all of the time.

 Embrace audio books.  We do a lot of driving in the summer as we visit family, so audiobooks from the local library are a constant companion.  They cut down on our kids arguing, creates conversation, and become a part of our summer memories.

 Create a summer routine.  One of the biggest things I discuss with those at home is to find a routine for summer reading and not leaving it to chance.  Is is that everybody reads before getting out of bed? Is it the last thing that happens at the end of the day? Create a drop-everything-and-read time and then abide by your own decisions and join in with your own books, because we know that children who see adults read, read more themselves, thanks Stephen Krashen.

 Embrace real choice.  So your child wants to read the same book all summer?  Ok. So your child wants to read super easy books all summer?  Ok. So your child wants to read only one type of book all summer?  Ok. Summers are for great reading experiences, for having fun with your reading, for keeping the joy of reading alive.  We can work on challenging texts later.

 Flood your home with books if possible.  We have books everywhere at our house, which is a privilege in itself. So if you can leave books wherever your kids are: the car, the bathroom, the living room, their rooms.   If you do not have access to a lot of books, ask the school for help, scour garage sales, or visit the library if possible.

 Be invested and interested.  Ask genuine questions about their reading experiences.  Share your own. Embrace your reading slumps together and do something about them together.  Ask questions about what they plan on reading, whether they like the book or not, or what made them pick that book.  Keep it light but keep it constant.

 Keep it joyful.  We often lose readers over the summer because it is seen as a chore, so keep it light, keep it fun.  Don’t assign journal prompts or summaries to go with it. Don’t make it homework, but instead revel in the joyful experience that reading a great book can be.

Happy Reading!

Amazing Space!

 We started learning about space by discussing how people can leave the earth to get there. To understand that, we discussed Newton's Laws of Motion as well as the force of gravity. A rocket needs to go fast enough to overcome the force of gravity. We made 2 kinds of rockets of our own. One was made from a straw and was blown to propel it. The other was made from a plastic film canister. We used Alka Seltzer tablets and water to create a gas which launched these rockets. It was fun going outside to see them blast off!

We had a chance to get an idea of what a journey into space would be like as we took a simulated journey in the Space Shuttle. NASA may not be using the Space Shuttle any more, but it is in use at BMS!

Here is our launch team at Mission Control at Kennedy Space Flight Center.

Our astronauts in the Space Shuttle are ready for their mission!

We all worked together as a team as we read from a script which was taken directly from the last flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. A video in the front of the classroom showed the launch sequence and blast off, and then displayed pictures of our lovely blue planet once we were in orbit!

While in orbit, we were all transformed into astronauts who were doing experiments for NASA. Here are some pictures of our assignments.

Planting seeds using a glove box

Eating in space

It costs $10,000 to send 1 pound of anything into space.
We weighed liquid and powdered Tang and calculated how
much money could be saved by taking the powder into space.

After we had completed our mission, we had a real treat. Dr. Nicola Fox came to speak with us. She is the Project Scientist for the Parker Solar Probe which will launch this summer to fly through the sun's corona to give us more information on our home star. We were enthralled as she spoke to us about this satellite and all the women who worked to make it possible. She inspired us! Yes, girls can be rocket scientists or anything else!

International Bazaar

Below are the links for the performance and iMovies.  Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/mrOkwNekjmI

https://youtu.be/RhojgD7bj1Q

Google Expeditions

Students in grade 1st-5th explored augmented reality through Google Expeditions.  In fourth grade, students observed the planets in our solar system.

Wonderful Water

What is necessary to life, is used every day, and is taken for granted in the USA? The answer is water. Learning that people in other countries do not always have access to clean, healthy water has made us appreciate our ability to turn on the faucet and have immediate access to it throughout our country. But how is the water cleaned and how does it get to us? That was the question we pondered in science. We learned that Baltimore's water is piped from a reservoir to two water treatment plants, where it is cleaned, filtered, and disinfected. From there it travels through more pipes to all of our buildings.

After learning about this process, we were given a challenge. A new city was being built and we were asked to design the filters for its water purification plant! Each table of girls had the opportunity to design a filter column that the water could be poured through so that the impurities would be removed from it. Considering the way the river water looked when it reached the new city, this was quite a challenge!

We were given large gravel, small gravel, sand, charcoal, and cotton to use in our filter columns. It was up to us to decide which materials to use, the amount of each, and the order in which to add them. First we drew the design that we wanted to plan.

We made prototypes and tested them to see which were the most effective at cleaning the water.

Then we tested the different prototypes to see which design removed the most impurities. With this information, we were able to design and build new columns which were extremely effective at purifying the water.

Look at the water below each column to see how different it is from the original river water. Don't you think we did a great job?

French: Haïti

The girls have been learning about Haïti in French class. We discussed the geography, history, food, climate, languages (creole and French, of course!), and more. In pairs, the girls then created a quiz show using the app Tiny Tap to put their classmates to the test. Their projects were very creative and your girls did a wonderful job writing and answering questions en français.