Pottery and Knights

Third graders are busy designing Greek pots! Last week, we began our Art and Architecture Unit by learning all about Greek architecture; this week, we learned about Greek pottery. Students learned the difference in red figure and black figure (Ask them!), and we created our own pottery designs. Students also started their new Exploratory Course, in which they will be working to creating individualized projects related to their interests for our upcoming Greek Festival, which will be held in March.

Fourth graders are learning all about the knights of the Middle Ages in our "Those Who Fight" rotation. They have all been formally dubbed as "knights" and "dames," so hold them to their code of honor by expecting chivalrous manners! :) Today, my Thursday students were the first to pilot our NEW laptop computer lab!!!! I was thrilled, as were the kids! This is a four-year long dream come true for our school, and we can't wait to put it to good use. We viewed several informative webpages about knights and the Middle Ages, including one created by a fourth and fifth grade gifted students like us! We began making plans to write an ABC book about knights and/or create a webpage. Last but not least, students finished their independent projects for "Those Who Work" and "Those Who Pray," and they attempted (some successfully) to solve Einstein's Riddle in the Problem Solving Mini Course w/ Mrs. Belew.

Internet Activities for Gifted Students (at school AND home!)

As promised in the January calendar I sent home, I am finally sharing some good resources for gifted kids - activities to do at home, websites, games, etc. I will continue to post resources and ideas through the month of February, so that you will hopefully have a plethora of ideas to try at home with your gifted child! I will also include some resources for parents of gifted children.

This week's focus is online resources. Here are some great websites that I have found:

http://www.adifferentplace.org/index.html - contains MANY high quality activities created by a gifted teacher especially for g/t students. This could be used by students at home, as well as by the teacher at regular school as a method of differentiating instruction.

www.hoagiesgifted.org/brain_teasers.htm - lots of problem-solving activities and games

www.mathplayground.com - math games, logic puzzles, etc.

www.freetypinggame.net - Of all of my third and fourth graders, only a few know how to type (the correct way). This site features many FREE games to learn typing skills.

http://42explore.com/pottery.htm - 3rd graders are in the process of learning about pottery in ancient Greece. This site includes lots of links to kid-friendly info. and activities.

http://www.schoolsliaison.org.uk/kids/greecepot.htm - We used this cool site in class to make our own Greek pots! Very neat!!!

http://library.thinkquest.org/J002767/index.htm - a WebQuest about knights, our current fourth grade topic of study in our "Those Who Fight" rotation.

These are just a few; many more to come later! Visit our site often for new postings!! :)