Family Math Night

This past Thursday was the second annual Family Math Night! Families and teachers enjoyed learning about the content strands in the EveryDay Math curriculum. Each classroom had a designated strand and offered a game that reinforced content learned through that strand. After playing the game or activity, parents were able to take a handout with the directions on how to play at home. When families were not in individual classrooms, they were coming together in the library to make estimates, guess their parent’s height in cubes, and come up with different ways to express two digit, three digit and four digit numbers!

Minds-Up

Over the past two weeks, 4th and 5thgrade have been learning about how our brains work during Morning Meeting. These lessons began with a description and discussion of the 3 main parts of the brain; the Prefrontal Cortex, the Amygdala, and the Hippocampus. After understanding the duties of these three parts, students learned about mindful awareness through a series of listening activities. Finally, students were taught how to use deep breathing to calm their mind when their amygdala is presented with stressful situations. This deep breathing activity is called “The Core Practice” and calms the mind in order to make room for new knowledge to be gained.

Giving Back

Last week during Whole School Morning Meeting students discussed the recent historical flooding in our state. Students responded to this heartbreaking event in so many beautiful ways. The Cooper School community spent their time after school finding unique ways to raise money and support victims of the recent flooding including: lemon-aid stands, playing music at Second Sunday, selling drawings, doing chores at home, sharpening pencils, and having bake sales. This week we will be making our donation to the Salvation Army. Through our students’ hard work and dedication we were able to raise about $680. Giving back is great!