Weekly Update 2/15/13

Weekly Update 2/15/13

Happy Valentine's Day from this week's bloggers!!

Emma, Jackie, Trey, Matt, Sean, Alex Y, William, Michael K, (& Michael P) Valentine's Day hearts!

Author Visit:  Adam Gidwitz

Author of A Tale Dark and Grimm and In a Glass Grimmly

On Friday afternoon, Mr. Gidwitz came to Thomas to tell us the gruesome original Cinderella story and to answer our questions.  Some of us had to cover our ears during the really disgusting parts! He is a really funny, awesome storyteller.  Everyone had a great time, and all of us who haven't already read them want to check out his books.  He has a new book coming out this fall that we can't wait to read!

Mr. Spicer from the AHML(right)  introducing Mr. Gidwitz (left)

Mr. Gidwitz acting out Cinderella

Social Studies:  China Earth Quest

In social studies this week we learned about China's geography and natural land features. We also learned about the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and other famous places in China when we went on our China Earth Quest on GoogleEarth.

Emilia and Cassy exploring China

Rocco and Paul

Health 
In health with Mr. Craig we learned about human lungs.  Mr. Craig brought in a pig's lung and we got to touch it.  We got to feel what it felt like when it breathed in, and we got to feel the two different lungs and the arteries.  We learned all of the different parts of the lungs and we all had a lot of fun!

Ben with the pig's lungs

This was a game that we played in health.  The goal is to infect everyone with one sneeze.  After you sneeze and infect everyone, you move on to the next level.  Once you sneeze on someone, they sneeze on other people, and it keeps going on until the sneezing stops and no one else gets infected.  We learned about how quickly germs are spread!

Valentine's Day

Thomas was trying to see how BIG an impact we can make in one day, so Thomas students were asked to bring in canned foods on one day only-Valentines Day-to donate to the food pantry.  Thomas ended up bringing LOTS of cans to help the needy! 

Claire, Veronica, Carol, Alex Y, and Charlie with the cans 6-12 donated

For Valentines Day we made cards!  Mr Aho  took pictures of us with our fists out, cut a slit in our fist, and during advisory on Thursday/Valentine's Day we put a sucker in our fist. We made cards for a friend or family member. Our pops were provided by our teachers, Mr.Aho and Mrs. Ziegenfuss.  The cards made our inner artist and Valentine's Day spirit explode all over the Sigma rooms.  

Sigma wishes you all a Happy Valentine's Day!!  

Here are some of our super-cute cards!

                                                                          Patrycja

                                                                            Trey

                                                                          Michael B.

                                                                            Isabel

                                                                                Ben

Keatyn

                                                                         Emma

Claire

Annie

Jack S.

                                                                               Alex Y.

∑igma Celebrations!

Mr. Aho created a video using some of us to make it. He created it to teach the other Thomas teachers about how to write good test questions and make them fair and equal for all the students.  Mr. Aho showed our video to the whole Thomas faculty at their after school meeting.  We hope they learned a lot from us!

 

 Michael B's Word of the Week video.  Nice job, Michael!


Illinois Grade School Music Association Competition Winners!!   

This was an event where you compete against yourself.  You got to choose the song you play.  You have to practice a lot.  You are supposed to be practicing for this everyday.

Matt got the gold medal for the violin contest.

Matt

Isabel got a perfect score on playing the cello in a competition to play your best polished piece. Isabel got a first place medal in the Music for Youth solo play.  Here is Isabel with her outstanding first place medal she won in the competition.

Isabel

Emilia did an outstanding job in the music for youth solo competition. Emilia got a perfect score! Here Emilia is with her perfect score and her first place medal! What you have to do is you have to pick a song and play it in front of a judge, and they score you on all the important things. 

Emilia

Here Emilia is holding a bass clarinet. She is in the wind ensemble, and they were recording a song to try and get into the Super State finals, which is really hard to get into.  Her group will find out in March if they made the finals.  Good luck to Emilia and her group!