February 20, 2026

Would you want to live in ancient Egypt? Waking up to your pet monkey, barely getting away from a chariot quickly passing by, or looking out for crocodiles trying to bite you when you’re getting on your daily boat ride in the Nile?! We read a fun and quite descriptive “life in the day” from our Storyworks magazine. Most of our class decided the salt and wasp poop medicine (amongst other dangers) were enough to make them decide they are much happier living in modern America than in ancient Egypt.

We also began researching for our current project. Everybody chose a topic they wanted to learn more about in reference to ancient Egypt. I’m so excited for these research projects because not only does it include a wide variety of topics from pharaohs and gods to plants and life on the Nile, but each child will have the opportunity to present their research as a play and act it out for some of our other classes! 

With over 2,000 in total, it was getting a little tricky to keep track of all of the Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses so everybody chose one to become an expert on and report back! We’re all very eager for you all to see their posters next month at conferences. They have worked so hard on both their research, as well as their artwork. 

Fractions, decimals, obtuse and acute angles, PEMDAS, oh my! We have been so fully immersed in geometry this semester that I think we are all thinking right and straight..HA! Over the past few weeks in math, we have been busy exploring some exciting geometry and number concepts! We’ve been learning about different types of angles, including right, obtuse, and “cute” (acute!) angles, and practicing how to measure them accurately using a protractor. Students are also identifying and drawing parallel and perpendicular lines, as well as working with line segments and rays. In addition to geometry, we continue to strengthen our understanding of fractions and decimals, making connections between the two, and practicing how to correctly solve problems using the order of operations. It’s been wonderful to see their confidence grow as they build these important math skills! 

Our latest Mathematical Mindset activity was soooo fun! Students used tangrams to build fractions that were less than, greater than, and equal to in different ways. Everybody was either paired up with one or two partners and as a team, they had to discuss how determining what fraction each piece of the tangram set represents will help them to build larger fractions. Each group had multiple sets of tangrams, a white poster board, and everyone got to present their solutions. This was an ongoing project that took about a week with an extension that went into the following week where students then got to create their OWN new shapes within a tangram. Check out the pictures in our Google album!

Blast from the past…

Over the last month, we have done some very cool projects and want to highlight some of the fun learning that’s been taking place in 209! 

  • Papyrus making and story telling
  • Our first Wordly Wise cumulative test
  • Continuing to read our really exciting novel The Egypt Game
  • Inspiration drawn from a SuperStem article encouraged these kiddos to completely create their own cookie recipe from scratch and then we baked them!
  • Bringing love to each and every Plato student with HEARTfelt messages we made with our buddies in Ms. Demetra’s class.
  • Visiting both our school library down the hall and finally getting to walk over to our awesome Des Plaines Public Library! 
  • Celebrating and learning all about the winter olympics as a school. Our class voted to be Team USA:)
  • Having SO MUCH FUN at the Windy City Bulls game! What an experience that I hope each of your children remember for a lifetime:)

Parents, a gentle reminder to please have your child check their folders for homework and always complete their reading log. Extra practice will be sent home from time to time, but it is not always coming back to school or it is not being completed.

Have a great weekend everyone and stay warm! Please remind your children to bring their jackets everyday as well as a hat and gloves. It’s still winter and very cold, but we will continue to go outside! 

-Ms. Anna

–“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

January 9, 2026

Hello Parents! Happy Friday and HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

We have had such an awesome first week back and have jumped right back into the swing of things! To kick off our new exploration and study of Ancient Egypt, we began reading our new novel, The Egypt Game. Ask your child who the characters are and what they think the book will be about. It seems pretty mysterious so far!

To introduce our new exploration, everyone shared any information they may have already known about Egypt and questions they want to learn the answers to. For example, which ancient civilization is older: Greece or Egypt? Does Egypt still have a pharaoh? How did they build the pyramids? How did they come up with all their inventions? Why do they have so many gods and goddesses? How do the pyramids look on the inside? Such great and thought-provoking questions from our group!

We know that ancient Egypt had made many advances and contributions to modern day society, but how exactly did they do that? Did you know that among the many inventions and “firsts”, Egyptians are responsible for the creation of papyrus, ink, tools such as ramps and levers, eye make up, toothpaste, and much, much more. We also learned about hieroglyphics a bit this week and the complexities of this writing system. It was interesting to see that a certain symbol could be used for either a letter, syllable, or even a whole word! Check out your child’s name in hieroglyphics! We also learned about the Ancient Egyptian caste system. The class was broken up into two groups and each group made a poster showing the different levels of this hierarchy. Check out the pictures in our album!

In honor of the new year, our New York Times article this week was all about growth, the future, and of course-cynicism!  This was definitely a new word for most of us. According to recent studies, a staggering 80% of Americans don’t believe that their children lives will be better than theirs. Wow. Your child has brought home this week’s article and I’ve included the link in the Home Connection section down below. I encourage you all to read this article with your child and discuss. We talked about shifting the cynical mindset to a skeptical mindset and how the two differ. Please remind them to check out the homework question in Google Classroom due Monday. 

After reading a super fun article in SuperSTEM called “I Teach Cookie Chemistry”, we came up with our very own cookie recipes using information we learned from the article and chemist Lesa Tran Lu. Our class was surprised to find out that just by switching sugars in a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe would change it’s consistency or swapping one ingredient for another would alter the texture. Next week, we will be baking some of our creations so stay tuned for some (hopefully) tasty results!

Home Connection:

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsMWYzvsqHk
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8a67NoB5N4
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf29-EzY3pM
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGq3d6payrI
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/learning/what-gives-you-hope-in-2026.html
  • https://superstem.scholastic.com/issues/2025-26/120125/cookie-chemistry.html

Announcements/Reminders: 

  • Your child’s daily homework is 30 minutes of reading and then writing it down in their reading log. Please make sure they are doing this every day! 
  • New after school activities begin next week!

That’s all folks! Have a wonderful weekend and GO BEARS!!!!!!

-Ms. Anna

—

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

November 14, 2025

Happy Veterans Day to all of our veterans and family members for this week. We took some time on Tuesday to learn about Veterans Day, who and what we celebrate, and what is the significance of celebrating every year on November 11. Ask your child why Veterans Day is always on 11/11 and bonus points if they remember how to spell Armistice! 

Another fantastic Student Opinion piece out of The New York Times this week. Check it out in the Home Connection section down below. We had quite a few friends out today and we definitely missed their input during our WWW discussion (weekly writer’s workshop). I encourage you all to take a couple minutes to read the article together and chat with your child about the questions. 

Have you ever heard of Tony Sarg? Neither had I until this week! Our Storyworks magazine prints a read-aloud story every month that our class looks forward to reading together. Everyone gets to choose a part, big or small, and after first rehearsing solo, we read it aloud as a class! The stories are non-fiction and give a condensed version of events that is still informational, but in a fun way! Maybe some of you already have a tradition in your home to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade every year, but if you don’t, I think it could be a lot of fun for your child to watch and be able to make those connections back to the story! Ask your child what role he/she played:) I was Bertha!

You might remember that last week we read another great article in our Time For Kids magazine from their “Your Hot Job” section where they highlight a different career every week. This one was about being a tiger zookeeper! Everyone finished their birthday invites about an animal of their choosing last week and presented, but we wanted to extend on that this week. Your kiddos were very curious about where their animals originated from, where can we find them now, and what kind of climate do they survive in? Next week, we will be tracking them on our world map and further discussing various climates and what role climate change has had in these animals leaving the areas that they originally came from. 

We were inspired by Time to make a list of jobs for our own classroom, but everyone had to interview for the position! One by one, students stepped into “my office” (our reading room) and were asked a series of questions such as why would you like this position? Why should I give this important job to you instead of someone else? How many years experience do you have being a librarian? Hehe:) I was really impressed with a lot of their answers such as drawing on personal experiences, examples from past classroom jobs, and someone even said if they didn’t do it well I could fire them! I told them that this is a very forgiving position with no HR to report to😆

We had two sections of our scientific method to finish up this week on our Pumpkin Lab from last week. I love when science and math work together! After writing our analysis and conclusion, partners worked together to create a graph of their choosing to present information from our activity. Check out the pictures from our presentations! Ask your child what was their hypothesis? Do they remember the pumpkin’s circumference?

Home Connection:

Reminders/Announcements:

This weekend looks to be gorgeous! I hope you all find the time to get out there and enjoy the weather:) GO BEARS!

-Ms. Anna–

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

November 7, 2025

Happy Friday everybody!

We have been busy, busy, busy the last couple of weeks and we’re getting very excited to showcase all of our hard work and projects to you all during conferences in a couple of weeks!

With all the Halloween buzz and National Candy Day a week ago, we read an article about how different types of candy are made in our Superstem magazine. At first, we each shared what our favorite candy is and charted our findings. Is it a chewy candy? A chocolate? A sour candy? What do they think causes the property of sugar to change? We then watched a short video on how jelly beans are made and I think we all found it super interesting-especially the part about what they do with all the jelly beans that don’t come out looking like they should! 

This totally inspired us to make our own candy inventions! Our class got SUPER creative in their candies and giving them different textures, unique names, interesting flavors, and really cool shapes! Take a look at our album for pictures from their presentations.

We finished our book! When You Trap a Tiger was one of my favorite novels I’ve read with my class and it had a lot of us about ready to cry in the end:( Everybody went back and searched the book for one of their favorite quotes and made a poster. What was your child’s about? When I asked if they wanted to keep their books to reread at home, they all said yes because they loved it so much! I highly recommend reading this together:)

Our class has been learning all about improper and proper fractions, mixed fractions, and simplifying. I’ve included a link to our latest Mathematical Mindset activity we did last that the kids really enjoyed doing. Everyone got a copy of the “I Spy 1/2” visual and their own dot paper. Kids worked in pairs to see how many halves they could find on the paper and then write them on their dot paper. Sure, there were the very obvious ones such as the square split diagonally into two triangles, but what about the not so obvious ones? 

As you may recall, our seeds that were planted in organic soil were a stinky disaster! I’m happy to report that besides teaching us a lesson in failed experiments, those three groups are now parents to mint and basil seeds in traditional chemical ridden soil! Woo! By our calculations, we should have germination within 10 days.

I think everyone really enjoyed the article from our Time For Kids magazine this week about a tiger named Bakso that was celebrating his first birthday. It was featured in the “your hot job” section of the magazine where we not only learned lots of cool facts about Bakso and milestones in his first year of life, but it focused on what a tiger keeper’s responsibilities are and what a typical day looks like for them. Afterwards, everyone chose an animal to research and write an invitation to a birthday party for them! Everyone got to present to the class when they were done. Stay tuned for next week’s extension!

Besides learning some super cool facts about our animals, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to teach the kids how to actually use the internet effectively! Not surprisingly, everyone was relying on the AI overview answer when searching something in Google’s search engine. I encouraged everyone to distinguish between credible and non-credible sources and showed them how to cite their sources. As we progress throughout the school year, my hope is to show these guys and gals how to use the internet most effectively and be able to uncover reputable and reliable resources from “fake news”.

We finished our opinion essay based off the article “When Teasing Goes Too Far” this week. Considering your kids are really proud of these and would like to show you during conferences, I can’t share too much other than BRAVO to these young writers and upstanders!

Home Connection:

Announcements:

  • Make sure to check out the Pledge of Allegiance Photo Album Link in Parent Notes. Our class has been in charge of saying it every morning!
  • Conferences are coming up! If you need to make any changes, please let myself and the office know ASAP. Thank you:)
  • Our class has teamed up with Ms. Beth’s to do our first service project of the year! We are collecting canned goods for the Des Plaines Food Pantry now until November 21. Please visit https://www.selfhelppantry.org/ for more information.

Have a FABULOUS weekend out and about everybody! See you all Monday:)

-Ms. Anna

—

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

October 17, 2025

Happy Friday Parents! 

Our class has been talking a lot about the media, the internet, social media, etc. in the last few weeks. This week, we read an article in Time For Kids about their Kid of the Year Tejasvi Manoj. She created a program to educate seniors about online scams. Before we began, I asked everyone, “what does literacy mean?” Some students said reading and writing, others said spelling and grammar. We define literacy as the ability to read and write, but what does information literacy mean? Media literacy? Technology literacy? We learned about new types of literacy and their importance in helping us navigate this rapidly changing world. I also then threw in an example about how we all did not grow up with cell phones and computer games, but rather spent our time outdoors playing and being creative when we got bored so you may have some questions coming your way parents! Either way, you can check out the chart we did as a class down below and read the article with your child this weekend:)

We have germination people! During our science lab this week, we were so excited to see that some groups’ seeds have begun to sprout-yay! The thing that perplexed us most was what caused some seeds to sprout, but not others? Remember, three groups have organic soil (which is more like pellets) and three groups have non-organic soil. One student in Ms. Beth’s class said maybe the reason is because the organic soil is more dense which then one student in our class mentioned that the seeds could have a harder time pushing their way up under all the weight of the pellets! Another said that maybe they didn’t have enough water or the location wasn’t beneficial. Regardless, we can’t wait to see what happens next Wednesday!

I highly suggest reading this week’s student opinion piece in The Times titled What Brings You Joy and discussing it with your child. Their answers were heartwarming, funny, and honest. We learned a lot about each other and our writer’s workshop has become a class favorite! You can find the link below.

This week, we wrapped up our two week unit on mixed fractions and improper fractions. I let your children know that they could find extra practice on Khan Academy and that I would also be sending you all one of the resources we used from Narc Narcisse School (down below). Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re having a hard time navigating Khan. We seem to have had some issues lately with some accounts!

You may recall that during our exploration of Asia, we have been learning a lot of geography along the way! This week, while studying the continent’s land, we made clay models of convergent boundaries, divergent boundaries, the plates, and the asthenosphere-which we learned is a Greek word by the way! Check out this week’s pictures in our Google Photo album:)

Home Connection:

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVn04eJRjV4
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cInBgbH7UYw
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/learning/what-brings-you-joy.html
  • https://narcnarcisseschool.thinkific.com/courses/take/FractionBasics/quizzes/13823756-quiz-8
  • https://multiplicitylab.northwestern.edu/project/ltt_cu-008-many/
  • https://www.timeforkids.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/G3_251003_worksheet_understanding_literacy.pdf

Reminders/Announcements:

  • https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0F4BAFA72CABFA7-59577113-fall#/
  • Next Wednesday, October 22 is EARLY DISMISSAL at 1:30. No after care or after school activities.
  • Art To Remember order forms were sent home today. Please make sure to check your child’s folder with all the information.

Have a fabulous weekend and GO BEARS!

-Ms. Anna

—

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

October 10, 2025

Happy Friday eve everybody!

We kicked off this week with another fantastic article in the New York Times that I have included down below. The kids really enjoyed this one because they not only got to showcase their creativity and interests, but began to collaborate with their peers about how they could join forces and create a school that catered to multiple people’s interests! Ask your child what their school’s concept would be, who would they hire as teachers from their community, what classes and ideas would they adopt from our school, etc.

As you may recall, our class has teamed up with Ms. Beth’s for a weekly science activity where we will be conducting a semi long term experiment on various vegetable seeds. Over the last month, your child has created a lab book where they recorded information pertaining to their seeds such as how much water, sunlight, etc. is needed, placement of seeds in soil, our independent variable (did they use organic or non-organic soil), and where they placed their mini greenhouses (we covered each clear plastic bin with plastic wrap). This week, they finally got to plant their actual seeds now that all preparation has been conducted! They recorded how much water their soil and seeds needed on day 1 and made their predictions of when their seeds will begin to germinate. Now we just have to wait and see! Yeah science!

Did your child tell you about some of our fun new math games? In addition (ha-pun intended!) to Mindset Math and Everyday Math, we continue to play math games everyday and our class is really loving the new ones we added (hehe) to our collection. Decimal War, Fraction War, and Math Stacks (fraction equivalence) are our three new ones in case you’re looking for a new fun game to play with your child at home! Some others we continue to enjoy are Proof, Adsumudi, Set Up, and Triominoes.

We also read a really interesting article this week in our Super Stem magazine about bringing back to life previously extinct animals. Your child can login at home to reread the article with you and tell you how they answered the following questions: which animal would you bring back between the dodo bird and wooly mammoth and why? Do you agree or disagree with modern-day science that we should continue to resurrect previously extinct species? 

Lily and Ricky are about to get into some trouble now that they found the star jars and our class is full of theories! Will Lily save her grandma and everyone from the tiger? Is Ricky a tiger? Will Sam find that Lily has the star jars hidden under her bed? The suspense is definitely keeping us intrigued and excited to see what happens next!

Vocabulary list this week:

  1. cylinder
  2. examine
  3. fatal
  4. feature
  5. grasp
  6. jet
  7. marine 
  8. scar
  9. tentacle
  10. vessel

Home Connection:

  • https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/learning/if-you-could-create-your-own-school-what-would-it-be-like.html
  • https://superstem.scholastic.com/issues/2025-26/100125/would-you-rather-dodo-woolly.html?language=english
  • https://multiplicitylab.northwestern.edu/project/ltt_cr-010-many/

Reminders/Announcements:

  • We will be on a field trip tomorrow, October 10 to Wagner Farm! Our bus is scheduled to be back by 3:00 p.m. The weather looks to be a bit chilly and cloudy. Please make sure your child is dressed appropriately. It may be a good idea to send them with a vest, jacket, hoodie, etc. and a hat just in case. Also, we will still be having gym in the morning prior to the field trip. If you choose to send your child with a different pair of shoes for the field trip such as boots, that’s fine, but they will still need gym shoes for school.
  • No school Monday in observance of Indigenous Peoples Day.
  • Don’t forget-your child should be reading a MINIMUM of 20-30 minutes a night:) Beginning next month, we will be keeping track of reading time with our reading logs again!
  • Please don’t forget to use the link I’ve included in previous blogs/emails to join our class’s Google Photo Album! Your child is very excited to share their special moments from school with you!

That’s it folks! Have a wonderful long weekend! 

-Ms. Anna

–“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

September 19, 2025

Happy Friday Parents!

We had a GREAT week-per usual-in room 209! Our book has become super suspenseful in the past couple of weeks and we can’t WAIT to see what happens next! Is Halmoni a tiger? Is the library boy one? Will Lily be able to save her family from this mysterious tiger? In our book, Halmoni mentions many different herbs and plants she keeps in her garden to use for various purposes including protection from enemies. You may recall Ms. Beth’s class is also reading When You Trap a Tiger and we have joined forces to bring our very own garden to life! On Wednesday, we got our classes together to present our exciting new collaborative project where we made groups of 3-4 botanists. Our classes discussed how we would apply the scientific method to our experiment and answered the question, “what conditions help seeds grow successfully?” How many controlled variables will we have? What is your hypothesis? Ask your child what they are going to do to ensure the success of their seeds and what their hypothesis is! Each group then got together to create a plant-themed name for their group and decorate their laboratory notebooks. The names were super creative!

One of our articles from our SuperSTEM science magazine this week was about a 13 year old boy named Elijah that has been blind since birth. He has always used a cane to help him get around, however, as of last year he was teamed up with a guide dog named Maple. This article explored what a guide dog is, how they see, smell, navigate, etc. for their partners. We also saw how visual impairments are similar and different than one another. For example, how is tunnel vision different than light perception? How is light perception similar to blind spots? How do the other senses become stronger when one or more are impaired or completely lost?

We had our first spelling and vocabulary test this week! Your kiddos brought home a list of words and questions earlier in the week that they studied and prepared for such as torrents, climate change, currents and more. Please make sure to review these lists, old and new, with your child when they bring them home. 

Thank you for helping your child write their full address on the notecard sent home Thursday! We used it to address our letters that will hopefully make it back to your child in 5 years:) They are signed, sealed, and now addressed ready to go out in 2030!! 

Everyone did an amazing job presenting their future plans for a “cool” playground! We heard some very interesting plans like adding an ice slide, a cooling station, a bounce house with huge fans above, and more! Public speaking skills are so very important in life and the foundation for those skills starts now! Great job future innovators!

Lastly, this week’s Writer’s Workshop article from The Times was titled, “How Mentally Tough Are You?” If you didn’t have the chance to read it, please do so and talk about it with your kiddo. Their responses during Friday’s share time were truly wise beyond their years and very special to hear. One thing is for sure..we have a class of resilient, mentally tough, gritty kids alright!

Home Connection:

Reminders:

  • We will be needing our devices next week. All 4th graders should have one and if your child is in 3rd grade and does not have a device to bring and use at school, they can borrow one from the office.
  • Early dismissal next Wednesday, September 24 for Teacher Professional Development.
  • Please remember candy, cakes, and frosted items are not permitted for snack and/or lunch. I love my desserts just as much as anyone so I totally understand;) Some healthier options for snack are yogurt, cheese and crackers, fruit, vegetables and dip, pretzels, granola bars, etc. 
  • Make sure your child checks out our Google Classroom for their homework due Monday. A Time For Kids magazine was sent home on Friday with the article needed to complete the assignment. 
  • Don’t forget to check out our Google Photo Album! The invite link to join is in last week’s blog.

Have a great rest of your weekend everyone and see you tomorrow!

-Ms. Anna

–“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

September 12, 2025

Happy Friday everyone!

If you wrote a letter to your future self, what would it say? What is going on in your life right now that you want to make sure you never forget? What are your interests? Where do you think you will be 5 years from now? Ten years from now? Our NYT article this week was personally my favorite so far. The author wrote about a project he discovered where people write letters to their future selves that are later sent back to them after five years. I LOVE this idea-so of course we had to do it! Everyone wrote a letter to themselves that included things such as their age, current interests, long-term goals, and more. Each of your children will be given an envelope next week to learn how to address a letter, stamp it, and I will send them back to you in 5 years!

We had a lot of fun this week experimenting with different “hot spots” on our school grounds. Literally. Last week, you probably remember our homework assignment to read the article in Time For Kids about how playgrounds are being made now to keep up with climate change. Your child then designed their own playground and brainstormed their ideas about ways they could create a play space that stayed cool in extremely hot temperatures. So we decided to put our very own Plato Academy to the test! We had to find three spaces to record temperatures on for three different days. One that was shaded by a tree, one that was shaded artificially (under the canopy in the front of the building), and one that was in full sun (sport court). We then made sure to record the actual temperature, cloud cover, and humidity at the same time for three consecutive days. What we discovered was astounding! The difference in temperatures, especially today, was significant! See if your child can explain why this occurred, what could we do differently, and maybe you guys can try it at home over the weekend, too!

How many countries are there in Asia? 20? 30? 45? Earlier this week, we spent some time familiarizing ourselves with the largest continent and trying to better understand just how enormous it is. We took out books, globes, maps, and computers to help us label an empty map of Asia and things got a bit tight! Some of our friends color coded and wrote a map key on theirs while others numbered the countries and then listed them on the back. Next week, we will be learning about how continents have different terrain, climate, population, agriculture, etc. and how these things play a role in people’s lives. 

We had so much fun playing Connect4, Dice War, and Tenzi-but make it multiply! Math games remain an integral part of our math curriculum in conjunction with Mindset Math and Everyday Mathematics. Finding new ways to add fun challenges to games that we’ve mastered before is always interesting, but this week we took these three and changed the rules to make it all multiplication! If anyone needs a deck of cards to play multiplication war at home, let me know! I’d be happy to send your child home with one! 

Home Connection:

Please check your child’s folder and email for a short new vocabulary list that went home today! Also, see if you have a few extra minutes to spare this weekend signing in to Storyworks, Khan Academy, and/or Time For Kids. Let me know if you have any questions:)

Have an awesomely warm weekend and GO BEARS!

-Ms. Anna

—

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

September 5, 2025

Happy Friday everyone!

Have you all been keeping up with our novel?! The suspense is too much of what’s to come with Lily, the tiger, and her Halmoni! While reading chapter 8 today, Lily talks about how her halmoni was tracing her (Lily’s) life line with her fingertip while telling her a story. This got us talking about what is a life line and interpreting our own palms. We traced our own hands on paper and wrote down things about our past, present, and wishes for the future. Ask your child what they wrote about themselves!

This week’s New York Times article can be found down below. We talked about child influencers, what the pros and cons are of becoming one, would you want to and if yes, what sort of content would you put out, etc. During our writer’s workshop time on Mondays, we will read articles from various sources such as The Times, Scholastic News, Time For Kids, and more. Some issues take on current news stories, while others such as last week, take us back in time. I have sent home a Time For Kids article to read with your child over the weekend titled Play It Cool. After reading the article, I would like for your child to design their own heat-safe playground on a piece of paper. They can add things that are familiar to them or dream into the future! Please encourage your child to take their time on this and include color, too!

We did a super fun experiment this week exploring the tree states of matter, but more specifically, how air particles expand when heated. Why does this happen and how? We used a marshmallow and a microwave for our experiment! Before doing this however, we used our scientific method to help us:) Did your child’s hypothesis agree with the analysis? What was their conclusion? Just for fun, I gave everyone their own marshmallow to bring home and test out with you guys, too! Please challenge them to change the independent variable in this experiment and see if/how their analysis changes!

Our first field trip of the year was a success! I think everyone had a great time and I have to congratulate your kiddos on being excellent audience members:) I bet their favorite part was the mobile planetarium!

Home Connection:

  • https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/learning/would-you-want-to-be-a-child-influencer.html
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQsybALJoew

That’s all for this week folks! Have a wonderful weekend and GO BEARS!

-Ms. Anna

–“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein

August 29, 2025

Happy Friday everyone! 

We have quickly gotten into the groove of things over here in room 209 and we’re having a lot of fun already! 

Over the course of the year, we will be implementing Mindset Mathematics biweekly into our math curriculum. For those of you that were last year, we are continuing right where we left off as well as reviewing a bit. This week, we covered area and perimeter (ha! pun unintended). What is the difference? How do we measure each? We started by working with a partner to create pixalated letters and then measure both the area and perimeter of each. Throughout the week, we discussed area and perimeter more and more and even took some time to record the area and perimeter of various objects in our classroom. One of your child’s assignments for the long weekend is to record the area and perimeter of three things from their home. Make sure to label the appropriate measurement (feet, inches, centimeters, etc.).

We did our first science experiment of the year this week and had a super fun time learning all about the scientific method! Ms. Beth’s 4th/5th joined us to do a little lollipop science in our room. Can your child walk you through how they applied the scientific method to their lollipop science experiment? What was their purpose? What was their question? What about their hypothesis? Did their conclusion show their hypothesis was correct or incorrect? We know the dependent variable was the time, but what was the independent variable? Our class also took some time first to familiarize ourselves a bit with the scientific method and everyone wrote down three personal purpose questions they have that we could experiment on in the future. See if your child can you tell theirs!

One of my favorite times of the day is our Writer’s Workshop time-for many reasons! My goal for your children this year is not only to become strong writers by using proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling, but to become strong thinkers. During our writer’s workshop time, I challenge your child into thinking critically about a specific topic and to both write and talk about it. On Monday, I asked everyone to share in detail a little bit about their summer. Paint a picture with your words! What did you do? Did you experience anything new? What did that feel like? Did you go somewhere on vacation? What did it look like? Did you eat anything new? We then read an article from the N.Y. Times that your child will be bringing home today titled “Do You Get the ‘September Scaries’?” There were some questions at the end that we answered and then discussed as a class, but I encourage you all to read this with your child together and talk about some of the questions!

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. We mapped out where the hurricane began as a tropical depression in the Bahamas, touched down between Miami and Fort Lauderdale as a category 1 hurricane, before intensifying into a category 4 in the Gulf of Mexico. Ask your child if they remember what caused Katrina to go from a cat 1 to a cat 4 in just two days. Please see below for homework extension.

Ms. Filisa came to our class this week to read us a book called The Magical Yet. Our Plato theme for this school year is THE POWER OF YET! We always focus on a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset here at Plato and all of our students took part in a collaborative project where they shared their own magical yet, which will be displayed here at school:) My magical yet is to run a half-marathon (let’s not get crazy everybody)! What’s yours?

Our specials are as follows:

  • Monday: Greek and P.E.
  • Tuesday: Greek and Art
  • Wednesday: Greek and P.E.
  • Thursday: Greek dance and Chess
  • Friday: Spanish and P.E.

Homework this weekend:

  1. Read “Kids to the Rescue” article and answer questions. If you need a link to the article, please let me know. 
  2. Find the area and perimeter of three items in your house. 
  3. If your child left early, they will also need to read chapter 5 of When You Trap a Tiger since we read this in class.

Reminders/Announcements:

  • Please remind your child to check their backpack for homework throughout the week and weekend. We’re still adjusting to the new school year and different expectations of 3rd and 4th grade so some reminders in the beginning could be helpful!
  • Our snack is in the morning prior to lunch. Please keep in mind cookies and cakes are not a snack choice, but rather best kept for a small dessert post lunch. Yogurt, cheese and crackers, veggies, fruit, and fruit/veggie based snacks are better choices. Also, some of our friends are finishing their lunch within a few minutes. It may be helpful to check in with your child and see if they are still feeling hungry after lunch and possibly adjust portions to these rapidly growing bodies!
  • Each of your children have been assigned a student gmail account this year. Their email address is “student.firstname.lastname@platoacademy.org. Your child should be bringing their notecard home in their folders today. 
  • We will also be utilizing Google Classroom and Khan Academy this year. Your child should get into the habit of checking it everyday for homework assignments, reminders, deadlines, announcements, etc. More information will be shared in a separate email. 
  • Take home folders went home today. Please make sure to bring back to school on Tuesday! 

That’s all folks! Here’s to a great Labor Day weekend and see you next week!

-Ms. Anna

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“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”- Albert Einstein