During this year the school-wide science curriculum emphasizes physical and chemical sciences.  W'll explore minerals, rocks, and fossils; dinosaurs and other prehistoric life; geological time;  and earth processes including earthquakes and volcanoes until the winter break.   Weíll go on field trips to a quarry in Wisconsin as well as to Chicago's Field Museum.  Using the resources of the Field Museum's Harris Center to augment our classroom materials, we'll have an abundance of hands-on experiences throughout the year. 

  Camp Edwards will provide a wonderful extended setting for our geological and African units for three days in early October and again in June.  We will send more information about these trips after school starts, when we solicit volunteers.

 This year the All-School Theme will be The Stage.  During the week-long theme, held in the spring, we hope to study African dancing.  We'll also study ancient Egypt and contemporary Africa in the spring.

  Weíll begin to study the moon first thing in September.  The students will keep individual moon journals, which we will make and send home with instructions during the first week of school.  We are asking you to take your children out to look for the moon every day so that they can record their observations.  This will be their main homework for the first couple of weeks.  As tempting as it may be, please do not go out and get books about the moon or explain the cycle to them.   If you have good moon books, now is the time to put them away.  The same goes for calendars which detail the moonís phases.  In September we will all take a pledge not to do research for the first months of the project.  Let the children have the experience of gathering data and coming to their own conclusions.  We will have regular class discussions of our empirical observations.  The unit will culminate in a night-time class Moon Party at Promontory Point in December.   Thanks for your help with this!  We'll expand our moon unit in January as we study astronomy.

   Language arts and math are integrated into the science and social studies curricula whenever possible.  Fiction and nonfiction which relates to the curricula and is at the right reading level is often used, although we read a wide variety of childrenís literature for its own sake.  Each child will be expected to contribute writing to monthly magazines and weekly newsletters.  Weíll begin the year studying geometry, developing skills in the four basic operations, and working with money.     While we will work on concept development and some practice at school, the majority of children need to spend a few minutes daily at home working on their addition, subtraction,  multiplication and division fact families.  Peggy Kaye's Math Games is a good source of ideas for easy, make-it yourself games if you are looking for creative ways to assist your child with basic skills.  Marilyn Burns' I Hate Mathematics is wonderful for more advanced independent work.