Snowy Day on Monday...

Gingerbread Houses

This afternoon, we made gingerbread houses with the preschool class. The fourth graders were such great role models for the younger kids. We had such a fun time!

Look for more pictures on the Grade Four website, under Miss O'Reilly's page.

December 7, 2009

Today, a convoy from Maine came by Winthrop School. There are lots of wreaths that were made in Maine and are being delivered to Arlington National Cemetery. They are going to be put on graves there. There were police cars, motor cycles, 18-wheelers and every vehicle that was participating had a wreath on the front. Our whole school went outside holding flags to show respect for what they are doing. It was a patriotic thing to do.


In math today, we did two journal pages of partial products and estimating. Partial products is a strategy we use to multiply higher numbers. Here is an example:


Partial products is pretty easy to remember. It helps us to practice our facts because there are tons of facts in one problem. We probably will be able to do a shorter version of this when we are older. Partial products is kind of fun. If you don't understand how to do partial products, just ask one of us or come find a seat in our classroom!

by Tommy and Aidan

The Week in Review

This afternoon, we made landform islands out of moon sand. We all had to make as many different landforms as we could. There were at least 16 landforms we could make. Flags said what type of landform was shown. We had fun making canyons, lakes, divides and all of the other landforms!


(Miss O'Reilly can't figure out how to rotate these pictures - sorry!)



Some kids made projects about skiing. Whoever does a project gets a pass for all of the ski mountains in New Hampshire for free. Hunton, Tommy, Patrick and Claudia were the only ones who decided to do it. Cowan and Olivia might have projects on Monday. Hunton's was a paper mache mountain. Tommy made a poster and Claudia made a little booklet with a map on the back. Pat made a timeline about skiing with pictures. It was really exciting.

Also this week, we read the books Orville and An Angel for Solomon Singer. We talked about the reading strategy of asking questions and learned about thick and thin questions. Thin questions are about basic facts and are like little noodles with no thick and creamy sauce. Thick questions have more meaning, take more thought and might not even have answers. Strong readers ask questions so they can be more keyed in to their book. They want to read more.

By Jillian and Nate