Graham Cracker Cottage Craziness!

What a fun day we had this past Friday in gifted. We decided to embark on a Martha Stewart inspired version of gingerbread houses- making them out of graham crackers instead. Okay, so they may not have come together quite as smoothly as Martha's did on her show, but we had a blast building and decorating them nonetheless. This group of kids always amaze me with their ability to really dig into a task and make the most of the experience. I am so appreciative to have the opportunity to work with this amazing group of students and wish you and your families a wonderful holiday. Thank you all of your thoughtful gifts. I look forward to learning with my fabulous 4th graders in 2008!
Enjoy the slide show !

holiday fun and colored words

Today we did a science project on stroop effect and followed the scientific method for ex. blue,red then we would have to say the color of the word and be timed.Then we did graham cracker houses then we made riendeer out of gingerbread cookies.

Friday Gifted Fun

Today at gifted we learn about Rousseau and hinks pinks.One thing we learn about Rousseau is that when he paints his jungle paintshe makes plants and trees bigger than the animals.Also that he puts everyday things into his paintings.Hinks pinks are whenthey give you a quitions and the answer isa one syllable,rhyming words for example, what do you call a silly rabbit,a funny bunny.

by Joshua

Forensic Friday!!!!

Today in gifted we had a guest come in from the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office in the Crime Scene Investigation unit and showed us some cool stuff that they use to find criminals of different crime scenes. She brought in some of the things that they use to help investigate crimes such a special powder that they use to see fingerprints. posted by Sara

Another Fabulous Day In Gifted!

Today in Gifted we did some really cool stuff! One thing we did was called cartoon confusion.Cartoon Confusion is when we first have a sheet of paper that has pictures of famouse idioms. what is a idiom? An example of a idiom is "it's raining cats and dogs". So we had to figure out what what the idioms stood for. One of the idioms was a picture of a rainbow and the word somwere over it. Then we came up with a real idiom and drew a picture of it. One of the things i drew was a picture with a girl and a fish. I made the fish sort of looking like it smelt bad, and the what i call "fish stink" was coming up and into the girls nose. The idiom for that was " something smells fishy". And remember when we put up a post about tesselations well we did the same thing as that but instead of wacky shapes we made ghosts.
By Ally

The Wonderful World of Gifted!

Thank you for coming to open house!

I am so fortunate to work with the very best children and therefore the very best parents in the world. I treasure the days that I spend with each and every student. Thank you to all who attended our open house. It was a pleasure to meet and talk with you. I look forward to getting to know you and your families even more as the year goes on. I am adding the voicethread presentation that we watched last night so that you are able to see it if you were not here. Enjoy!

JMOCA anyone?

JMOCA at first glance sounds like something that you would order at Starbucks, but it isn't! It is actually the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art, the location of our last field trip. We had a great time looking at art in motion. This worked out very well for us as we have been looking at the way artists (Degas in particular), embed a sense of motion in their work. After attempting to paint motion into our pictures, and create wire sculptures that show motion, we were eager to see examples of artists who had done the same. We saw some very interesting works in the gallery, then got to paint some watercolor pictures based on written instructions, and best of all...we got to play in the interactive, hands on loft. Included are some pictures from our trip-enjoy!

Rock and Roll is here to stay!

Today in class we looked at some videos of the original singers singing the songs that we are practicing for the musical. It was a lot if fun to see the different singers' unique styles of performance and dress! Here is A clip of Mrs.Zawis' favorite band of all time!

Footprint Fiasco

Today in gifted we did footprint fiasco which is footprint crime scene investigation.We went outside and split into two teams.Criminals and investigators.Then the criminals made footprints in the sand.Next the investigation team covered the footprints with plaster.Finally we picked up the plaster and had to match them to the bottoms of the shoes.
Preston

Exciting Field Trip!

We are thrilled to report that we were able to reserve seating for the ONLY matinee performance of Cirque de Soleil coming on January 17th. We even got orchestra seating...so we're all going, K-5. Mark your calendar, permission slips will be coming home soon and we'll need to get them back to pay our deposit. I can't wait. I have always wanted to go to one of their amazing productions. I hope you'll be excited too!

Extra! Extra! Blog all about it!

I am so excited to work with this fantastic group of 4th graders and hope that you (parents and students alike) have taken the time to check out our class blog. Each time that we have gifted, a different student adds a post to our blog about various activities that we worked on in class that particular day. I can't help but to join in on the fun and will be adding my own posts to update everyone on our classroom events as well. Over the past few weeks, we have been working as detectives throughout our own CSI unit. We have examined our fingerprints and are working on solving a logic puzzle mystery about some missing honey. We have also been studying various artists and composers including Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat and Frederic Chopin just to name a few. Has anyone ever played Tetris? Looked at an Escher painting? Well mix the two together and you'll get an idea of another project that we have been working on over the last few weeks-tessellations! After a selecting s shape, many rotations and turns later, they are all glued down on a piece of paper and are in the process of being colored in. Whew- and our field trip to JMOCA is just around the corner. We are having such a great year and I'll continue to keep you "posted" about our class!

Gifted MAGIC

Today at gifted, Mrs. Zawis complimented to everyone in class because they were doing a woooonderful job!! Today we tried to find out who`s fingerprints was who`s in "Fingerprint I.D." In "To Code or Not To Code" we had to come up with a code to cover Mrs. Zawis` saying.

WHAT A MAGICAL DAY!!

A Dusty,Dirty Day

Today we had a messy day.There was cornstarch everywhere and it took forever to clean up.We were doing a project called Fascinating Fingerprints which is where we took eachothers fingerprints.One person was criminal and one was investigator.
We also learned about an artist named Degas.We learned more songs for our upcoming musical Destination Rock and Roll!
Carli:)

The Magical Gifted Day

Today in class we did a experiment called Have A Cuppa we tryed to make a support to hold a styro-foam cup up in the air full uf rocks for five seconds we used clay,straws,tape and a couple of tooth-picks we all had strange ideas they held up pretty good it was a lot of fun!!!!!!



JACK

gifted fun

Today in gifted we did tesselations.Tesselations are something like puzzles. You cut out a shape then trace them and cut out alot of them and put them together with no emty space and no over lapping. I had alot of fun in gifted today and hope to have even more fun next week!
-Megan

Calling all blog commentators!

I just wanted to let all of my fabulous fourth graders know that if you make a comment on our blog, it will be emailed to me, I'll read it, publish it, and then everyone can view it by clicking on the comment link under the post. As I like to say- Get it? Got it? Good!
Congratulations Megan for being the first to comment! Woo hoo!

September 7

Today in gifted,we fineshed our Future laeders.We also did codebreakers.Codebreakers is a sentence that has symbols that you look at a key and translate the symbols.We had a great day in gifted!
Lahna

First Day Fun!

Last Friday was our fourth graders first day of gifted for the 2007-2008 school year. We had a lot of fun together- some faces were very familiar as I taught them as third graders, while others were new. Either way, I was happy to see everyone! We began by learning the rituals and routines of our classroom and followed with a day of enlightening activities. We learned about Georges Seurat and tried our hands (literally) at his pointillism technique, played a bit of "Webster's Theater", sang along to a couple of songs for our new musical, not to mention the self portraits we drew! Whew- what a day--and that was just day one! What a thrill it is to work with all of these enthusiastic minds! I cannot wait until tomorrow-onward and upward we go!

Me-The Little Mermaid?

One of my favorite Disney movies to watch as a kid was The Little Mermaid. I think that my sister and I had the entire movie memorized- we even had a tape of the soundtrack so that we could sing alond to every song. I think that I secretly wanted to be Ariel- a free spirited explorer who swam around wither her friends all day. This week, the teachers had to do some fun activities on our first day back to school and would you believe that one of these involved logging on to a website, taking a quiz, and finding out which Disney character you were most like?! Well, wouldn't you know, much to my excitement, I was most like Ariel. I guess some dreams really do come true -in a funny roundabout way! Which Disney character are you most like? Click the quiz to find out.

Blogging 101

Yeah! What an accomplishment! I've survived "Blogging 101" which is certainly a feat in and of itself, as I do not consider myself technologically savvy by any means. Now that I have my very own window into the world, I am excited to begin exploring. What a fun way for me to integrate my love of writing and constant desire to learn. I always say that if I could afford to spend my life taking classes and learning, I would!