It's hard to believe we have been in school for over 100 days now. February has been a busy month full of learning and fun. Below are some snapshots of what has gone on in the elementary buildings this month.

The preschoolers added heart counters to a plastic heart boat to see how many hearts it would take to sink it. We graphed the results and found out that most of the class used 10 hearts to sink their boat.

The Kindergarten class had a busy month. We learned about groundhogs during Groundhog Day, we enjoyed celebrating Valentine's Day, we made crafts, learned how to use our textbook, and counted to 100 on the one-hundredth day of school. We are definitely busy learning! Look! We are also blessed with so many learning materials from the NC Foundation Grant. Thank you!

On February third the 3rd grade students from Lowden and Mechanicsville traveled to Dubuque to see the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra at the Five Flags Center. They were all excited to see an orchestra in real life and hear them live! They even got to sit in the balcony!

Each year the DSO provides a free concert to local 3rd grade classes as part of their Arts Trek Series. Students learn about each family of instruments: strings, woodwind, brass and percussion. They get to hear individual instruments as well as small group performances and there is also a guest soloist from their concerto competition. Concert etiquette is also a big part of the learning process. Students learn appropriate audience behavior and also when it is okay to yell “Bravo!” and”Encore!”

This year students heard music from the movies including the Star Wars Theme and the Pirates of the Caribbean. The soloist was a cello player, and they were impressed that she had her solo memorized. The DSO, as well as myself, hope that these performances encourage and inspire students to get involved in music as they grow older!

We have spent some time in February celebrating our classroom growth in reading. We had the best time painting crafts. We painted wooden magnets, sun catchers, and painted on canvas. We finished a read aloud that we really enjoyed, A Dog Called Kitty. We are enjoying lots of different reading genres and are busy trying to finish our 25 book reading challenge!

We started a new unit in math that involves fractions. We are loving learning about fractions and continue to strengthen our multiplication and division fact fluency.

We enjoyed a small and simple classroom party for Valentine's Day. It is nice to receive kind messages and candy from each other.

Cold, wet, and icy days left us inside for recess at times. We enjoyed some new, hands-on, toys purchased by the foundation! We thank the foundation. We need to get some more Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys, we love them!

We are patiently waiting for Spring!

Fourth grade has been working on drawing conclusions in reading. They were very excited to read about Mount Everest and decided they wanted to take a deep dive into the famous mountain and come up with some fascinating facts to share with each other in class. We also took trips down to the 3rd and 5th-grade rooms to listen to their Reader's Theater. We enjoyed listening to both plays! In math, we have started the process of learning long division! The fourth graders realized that it's going to take lots of practice and patience, but they're getting there and working hard! We also wrote thank-yous and sent pictures to the foundation board for our fun, new seating options that we have in class!

We have been working extremely hard in 5th Grade! In math, we are finishing up our unit on adding and subtracting mixed numbers. We will then move our focus to multiply and divide fractions and mixed numbers. In reading and language arts, we read and analyzed myths. The students loved reading many different myth stories and then wrote a myth on their own. We finished the myth unit by completing a reader's theater. The students did an incredible job performing The Odyssey, a Greek myth. We will focus on biographies next. Our class had a fun Valentine's Party! We played games and wrote kind and supporting messages to our classmates on their Valentine bags!

Mrs. Haye's class was able to go to Dinosaur Adventure in Cedar Rapids! We were given a private tour before the doors opened to the public Friday afternoon. Students and adults had a ball. Not only did we get to see dinosaurs but we also got to play miniature golf, jump in a bouncy house, be paleontologists and dig for bones! Before we left, each student was given a drawstring bag with a stuffed dinosaur, stickers, a dino egg, and something to break open like a paleontologist!

Students and staff wore their tie-dye, tube socks, and more on TWOsday, 2/22/22. You can never have "two" much fun at North Cedar!

Both Lowden and Mechanicsville were able to meet in their mixed groups on February 11th and create Valentine cards for the local nursing homes. This was a fun time for the students and teachers since we weren't able to meet last year in mixed groups. The students were able to show their creativity and came up with some really neat cards. We hope that it brought some smiles to the residents.