Students have been very busy in music class! I encourage you to follow along on social media and follow our instagram account @MrsLangersMusicRoom. I post photos and videos of student performances, class activities, and special music moments throughout the year.  You won’t want to miss the fun!

October is an exciting month filled with creativity in the art room!  Kindergarten and first grade are trying out new techniques and processes in art class as well as practicing skills.  Kindergarten is working on their 5 Little Pumpkin projects where we explore different media to create pumpkins.  First grade is working on leaves, exploring line, color, and pattern.  Second grade is working on their giant leaf projects, focusing on repetition, using oil pastels and watercolors. Third and fourth grade artists are working on their zentangle leaves.  They are exploring various processes such as bleeding tissue paper, Kwik Stix, and marker printmaking.  We even tried out the marker printmaking for our spider webs.    

Our Gator Gallery is on display outside the library in the Art and STEM hallway.  Students enjoy seeing their artwork displayed each time they come to art class!

Lastly, our school is participating in a creative fundraiser with Art to Remember that allows you to purchase keepsake products customized with your child's art. There are over 60 products and many are less than $20. These make great gifts and a percentage of every purchase goes right back to our school. Order forms will be sent home this week with your child.  Click on the link below and enter the online order code shown on your child's order form or to search for your child's artwork by their name. Then, have fun shopping!

https://arttoremember.com/school/NEADWK

The deadline for free shipping to Gulph is November 7th, in order to have gifts in time for the holidays.  If you miss the deadline, you can still place an order at any time and ship it directly to your home.  Families can also upload additional artwork and save it to your student’s gallery so you’ll have it for years to come.  It is a great way to raise some extra funds for our Glovember projects and special materials for the art room! 

K-our PETS program (Primary Education Thinking Skills) kicked off with our first unit, thinking like a detective. Our next unit will be inventive thinking and coming up with multiple solutions to an inquiry.

4th Grade Math Enrichment-in addition to extension of our Everyday Math curriculum concepts, we have begun practicing for our Continental Math League (have a 1st place regional title to uphold!) using a collaborative “vertical” learning method.

1st Grade Excel-we finished up our first Wonders Unit extension on Community Helpers. We used Canva to create and write about our future occupations. 

2nd Grade Excel-After completing our first novel, Mummies in the Morning, we have moved  into our non-fiction study of Egypt this month. 

3rd Grade Excel-we are working through our first novel study, The Lemonade War. We are using the business concepts from our novel to prepare for a unit on economics and school store preperations (coming in December).

4th Grade Excel-we are concluding our first novel study, Ghost, about a character who learns about themselves by being part of a track team. We will be researching track and field events and teaching each other in a track and field “meet” as a novel extension. 

All grades have seen Mrs. Besz for Guidance class.  Our initial class was an introduction to the role of the School Counselor and a discussion on managing feelings.  All of our Gators participated in Feelings Stations where we played feelings memory, completed feelings puzzles, explored a variety of fidgets, made coping skills toolboxes and identified ways to handle our uncomfortable feelings.  All Gators in grades 1st-4th will have Guidance with Mrs. Besz monthly, while our Kindergarten Gators have Guidance twice a month. 

Mrs. Besz does weekly playgroups in our complex learner classrooms.  We rotate students to come into our special education classrooms with their grade level peers.  During playgroup, we work on play skills in stations.  This is a great way to work on sharing, taking turns, cooperating all while encouraging acceptance and making new friends!

Gulph Gators have been busy in STEM practicing their 4 Cs (communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication).  All grades have used a variety of materials like Strawbees and Keva Planks during Tinker Time.  

K - 2 students learned the importance of F.A.I.L. (First Attempt In Learning) through our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Challenge.  When their tree and letters would fall down, students would say “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” and try to rebuild a stronger tree.

1st - 2nd graders enjoyed learning about floods and dams.  They used the Engineer Design  Process and collaborated with their teams to create a mini dam that we tested.  When water would break through their dams, students would redesign their dams to make them better.

3rd - 4th graders worked in small groups to create Chain Reactions.  They also explored a brand new tool in the STEM room called the Chomp Saw.  This kid safe cardboard cutter will certainly inspire creativity and make our future cardboard projects easier!

The 3rd and 4th grade orchestras are up and running at Gulph! 3rd graders are working hard at learning good playing posture, the names of their strings, and how to use their left hand fingers to create more notes. We are just plucking for now (“pizzicato”), but we look forward to learning about the bow next month, in “BOWvember!”

4th graders are already working towards a concert. Every year, our 4th grade orchestra is invited to perform with the 5th-8th grade orchestras at their annual Winter Concert.  This performance will be on Thursday, December 4th at 7:00 p.m. at Upper Merion Middle School. We will partner up with the talented middle schoolers to perform 3 songs: “Sleigh Ride in the Park,” “Golden Grove,” and “Jingle Bells Boogie.” We can’t wait to see you there!