We ended 2018 and started 2019 discussing the Bill of Rights. We had 3 different assignments after we returned, but they were all open note. Those are the only grades in for Social Studies right now. We have switched over to science and will return to Social Studies later in February/early March.
So, for now we are studying the water cycle in science. This is not a new topic to the students, as they study it in first grade and really remember a lot of what they did from then. We discuss the 3 different states of matter (we do not discuss plasma in 4th grade as a state) and have created journal entries. For the next couple of days we will be discussing the water cycle and creating journal entries. The goal was to have a quiz on Tuesday (after the MLK holiday), but there is a chance it will be pushed to Wednesday. The students have already been told that they will NOT be allowed to use their journals for this. All of this information will be put to use again at the end of January as we have a STEM activity planned around the water cycle for the students.
After water cycle we will be discussing weather. We will study the different types of clouds, find out about several types of weather instruments and how they help us gather information about the weather, and also learn how to read a weather map.