Mrs. Maxham’s Newsletter

4/10/09

 

Dear Parents,

        We have had a very busy week this week.  On Tuesday we had Four Winds.  Our focus was the water cycle.  The students were able to do some fun experiments to explore the properties of water and learn about evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.   We were able to see one experiment called the volcano.  This experiment illustrated the idea that the warmer the water the quicker the water molecules are moving.  The quicker the water molecules are moving the more space is created for other things like food coloring.  Ask your child what happened to the cold blue water that was put into the jar of warm water during this experiment.

        In social studies this week we learned about the Cherokee syllabary created by Sequoyah.  Sequoyah created the syllabary for the Cherokee because he hoped that reading and writing would help the Cherokee develop a stronger government and gain more respect.  The reason why it is called a syllabary instead of an alphabet is it is made up of 85 symbols and each symbol stands for one syllable.  Not all English letters or sounds translate directly into Cherokee.  We had fun using the syllabary to try to figure out what our English names would be in Cherokee.    

 

Dates to remember:

4/13-4/17 – No School

4/28 -  School will be dismissed at 12:00

4/29 – School will begin at 10:15

 

Have a great April vacation!