Did You Smell the Stinky Sticker?

Throughout the day today the 4th grades at Bear Creek were treated to an entertaining and informative presentation about energy and natural gas safety. The presentation, sponsored by UGI and presented by the National Energy Foundation, focused on a basic introduction to energy, the difference between renewable and nonrenewable resources, how fossil fuels are created, and what we need to do to be safe around natural gas in our homes and communities. This informative presentation included an experiment that showed the kids exactly how decomposing plants and animals give off gas that eventually becomes natural gas. All of these activities and discussions covered one of our 4th grade science standards, and several gave our kids a preview of topics that we will be talking about later in the year.

The kids also had the opportunity to think about what they need to do to be safe in their homes (one message was cleaning up the clutter - hopefully it works!!) and to learn a little more about the warning signs of a gas leak.

And that's where the smelly sticker comes in. Mercaptan is a chemical added to natural gas, which is actually odorless, so people will notice a leak before a situation becomes dangerous. The scratch and sniff sticker your child brought home gives you all a great example of what a natural gas leak would smell like. You can thank us at conferences for all the stinky smells you had to do tonight! ;)

If you would like to learn more about the National Energy Foundation, you can visit their website by clicking here, and you can learning more about today's program by clicking here. UGI also has a fun web based activity where kids can visit and learn more about energy safety. Check out Energyville and see how well you do conserving energy!

Thanks to UGI and the National Energy Foundation for presenting this program, and a special thank you goes to Mrs. Kimmel for organizing the presentation for the Bear Creek 4th grade classes!

Free BEAR

Each day 4th graders participate in BEAR time. This half hour block prior to lunch is a chunk of time when the students participate in a variety of different clinics. Some students participate in clinics specifically tailored to meeting their reading needs in the areas of accuracy (decoding), fluency and comprehension. Other students participate in math, word study and reading comprehension clinics to review skills that have been taught and preview upcoming skills. These clinics take place every cycle Day 1 - Day 5 from 12:10 - 12:40.

On Day 6 the fourth graders get a brain break and get to participate in Free BEAR! Each teacher or group of teachers provides different activities in which the students can participate. The students, if they have completed all of their homework and classwork and have followed the Code of Conduct throughout the cycle, are able to choose the activity they would like to attend. Our current Free BEAR activities are:

• group games in the gym
• foreign language club
• nature walk
• arts & crafts
• reading, drawing and computers
• computers
• Chess & strategy games
• board games
• team challenge

In team challenge groups of students work together to solve a problem. This week's problem? Move a ball down our entire fourth grade hallway. The catch? The students could not touch the ball with their hands, the ball could not touch the floor, and the tools that the students were given could not touch each other. It took the group several tries, but eventually by using team work, problem solving and some creative thinking, they made it to the doors at the end of the hall! We started working on moving two balls down the hallways but ran out of time before we were successful. The group is excited to come back next week and wants to add to the challenge by seeing if they can go all the way down the hall and come back! Please check out the slideshow below to see the kids working together to Pass the Ball!

Scientific Method - Rap Style

Over the last few weeks we have been learning about the scientific method by actually putting it into action! We've done several different experiments and talked about each step as we completed them.

Know that we have some background knowledge about using the scientific method, we started to talk more about what each step actually means. To help us learn and remember the different parts we learned a scientific method rap.

You can play the rap and view the words by visiting this link!

We hope that you can learn a little bit about the Scientific Method by listening along with your child!

Bair / Towsen Math Homework

Tonight Mrs. Bair's and Mrs. Towsen's math classes started a new type of homework assignment. Each week your child will be bringing home math puzzles. These assignments cover the various skills we did  in class in the past and the skills we are working on that week. Each night for homework your child may choose any two boxes on the puzzle side of the paper and any one or two patterns on the back of the paper. Problems involving rounding, forms of a number or place value should use the "Number of the Day" to solve that work.

For example, if the number of the day says 5,322, your child would write that number in standard, written or expanded form. Or he or should would round to the tens, hundreds and thousands place in that number if that's the box chosen.

This is all your child needs to do for homework. Even if it seems easy for your child, please only have your child do the work that was assigned. We do not want your child to spend an extraordinary amount of time on their work because we want them to put their best effort into the problems they do. As the year goes on the number of problems may change for your student, and we will be sure to make that clear for them each day before they go home.

There is a space at the bottom of the paper for questions. If your child cannot explain what he or she needs to do for one box, they can pick another. If they are stuck on the whole sheet please simply jot us a note at the bottom and one of us will work with your child individually before or during math class.

Thanks for your support of your child as we try this different type of math homework!