Thank You!!!!

I just wanted to thank each everyone of you for the beautiful flowers children brought me for my birthday! The class made it a wonderful birthday, thank you!

Christmas Program

What a way to bring some Christmas cheer! They class did a wonderful job at the program Thursday night!

Thanksgiving Butter

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! On the last day of school before Thanksgiving we made butter with our book buddies. It was a lot of fun to watch the kiddos shake the whipping cream. They witnessed it starting as a liquid and then slowly transforming into whipped butter. After 30 minutes of the kiddos shaking it we finally had butter! We enjoyed our whipped butter spread on crackers. What a way to understand how the pilgrims made butter and all the work that went into making it back then.

Native Americans from Texas

This week completed our unit on Native Americans in Texas by conducting interviews of several tribes. The students did a great job conducting the interviews and representing the tribes of Texas. I loved the costumes!

Comanche Tribe

The Tonkawa Tribe

The Jumano Tribe

The Caddo Tribe

The Lipan Apache Tribe

The Karankawa Tribe

Election Day!!!

Yesterday was election day for the class! There have been many discussions and debates among the students as to who they thought was the better candidate for president. I have been very amused these past few weeks by it all. Each child was given a voting slip and then turned into the voting basket where the votes would be tallied. A funny thing about the tallying, we just reviewed tallying in math and how to turn tallies into a frequnecy chart or information chart. The votes were tallied and Romney won 18 votes to Obama's 2 votes. The lesson learned today (post election day) in class about elections...No matter if the candidate you were supporting for president won or not it is important to vote so your voice can be heard. We also learned to take the high road when your candiadte comes out on the loosing end and not to talk ugly about the winning candidate, as hard as that can be sometimes. I can tell that politics and the election were talked about within your homes, and I commend you for having those political discussion with your children. Some day they will be part of the voting process!

In the Month of November

Afternoon Y'all! I can't believe it is already November! The year is quickly passing us by. I hope everyone had a fun filled Halloween. Here is the academic overview for the month: Math- We will be collecting, organizing, and interpreting bar graphs next week. Then we will dive into division (2 digit by 1 digit, 3 digit by 1 digit). Rounding will make a return during division. Practice, Practice, Practice those facts! Texas History- How exciting we have had our first Early Texan sighting in the book! Today we read about the Caddo and Karankawa Indains and compared their cultures and lifestyles. Tomorrow and the days ahead we will conitnue with the contributions made by individual leaders, territorial expansions which lead into misunderstandings and reactionary behaviors, and economic motivations that influenced settlement patterns. Wow, I think we might have already had some conflicts due to territorial expansions within the classroom! Sometimes the children don't realize their territorial expansion of their desk onto other's territory (desk) causes some conflicts. Science- We will wrap up weather this week and then start landforms. We will undertsand that landforms are caused by many different effects such as weathering, erosion, and deposition. Then we will move into learning about soil, natural resources, fossil fuels, and conservation. Language Arts- Read! Read! Read! Book clubs will start this month. Reading comprehension skills will be continued and practiced throughout the book clubs. The rotation of Wordly Wise and Spelling will conintue. I thought their first narrative was well done. In Grammar, we will continue with verbs.

Regions Posters

Howdy Partner! We just finished learning about the 4 main regions in our great state of Texas: The Great Plains, The Mountains and Basin, The Coastal Plains, and The Central Plains. The The kiddos were rounded up into 4 groups where they did research on their specific region. They learned about the natural resources, economic resources, the 7 major rivers of Texas, major cities, and some fun facts. Here are pictures of each group and their poster.

Perimeter and Area

Last week we learened about perimeter and area. The kiddos measured their desk to find the perimeter and area, and then they measured their table as a group to find the perimeter and area. here are some great pics of them working toegther!

1st Blog!!!

Yeah!!! I think we are up and running. This will be the class info blog to keep you updated on what is going in the Mrs. Ratliff's wild 4th grade class. A play on words since I love animal print.