Dear Fourth Grade Families,

The class had a fun week learning more about maps and directions. After drawing a detailed map of our outdoor campus, the students worked in teams and wrote down step-by-step directions to various locations on campus. We began by sharing these directions aloud and trying to guess where they would lead us. Next, another team followed them to the letter! It was a lot of fun and a good opportunity to practice the need for details, proper directionality, and an awareness of where everything is around us. We also painted lanterns, worked on finishing our sweet gnomes for the first grade class in Handwork class, and stayed happily busy in Movement, Environmental Ed, and our Foreign Language classes. We ended the week by giving the third-grade a helping hand with farm chores.

This week, we will begin our Human and Animal block. This block gives students an introduction to the animal kingdom. We will look at various animals and their tendencies, and unique to a Waldorf-inspired education, we link these qualities to an essence of the human being, deepening the students’ feeling of connectedness to the world around them. We will look at vertebrates and invertebrates through stories, artistic renderings, and writing activities, focusing again on parts of a sentence, adding details and interest to our sentences, and paragraph writing.

Reminders:

Dress warmly!! Our students are just reaching the age of discerning that they need extra warmth, but many aren’t there yet! They need layers, hats, fingerless gloves, and thick socks (wool socks are best when possible).
During our lantern walk, please refrain from bringing any additional lighting (tealight candles will be provided) and dress warmly.
Coats can be donated all week during carpool as well as brought to the Lantern Walk evening.

With gratitude,

Melissa