6th Science: The students have just finished up a biome project that turned out wonderfully!  Each student researched a different biome and created a PowerPoint presentation and a diorama to explain their biome.  They are awesome!  Stop by and check them out if you have a chance.

Moving forward, we are going to do some activities involving states of matter and measuring matter.  This will include topics such as volume, density, and mass.

6th Social Studies: We are finishing out the year with Latin America.  Our study currently has us studying the three main ancient empires of Latin America; Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas.  Following our study of the ancient empires, we will be making Latin America information maps (this will be similar to the North American physical maps they made earlier this year).  Over the last few weeks of the year we will learn about some specific Latin American countries and cultures.

7th Science: Over the next month, and rest of the year, we will be focusing on some chemical concepts.  Understanding elements and how they are put together to make different molecules and substances is going to be our overarching theme as we move forward.  First, we will simply learn about what elements are and how they can be put together.  We did a really fun activity involving marshmallows to help understand this the other day!  After that, we are going to compare some compounds based on their acidity, and learn about some other chemical properties in the process.

8th Science: As we close out the year the 8th graders will be learning about flowering plants.  To help us in our study, each student has four Wisconsin Fast Plants they will be growing and making observations of for the next 6 weeks.  During the last two weeks, the students will be reviewing for and taking a cumulative final exam.

8th Math: 6th grade involved studying area and perimeter of 2-D shapes, now in 8th grade they have moved up in the world and are going to learn about area, perimeter, and volume of 3-D shapes.  This unit can be tricky to understand for students that have a hard time visualizing shapes and area.  However, we will be doing lots of hands-on activities to help them through it!