What a trip!

Ipoh Field Trip:

Well, we made it back from an amazing trip to Ipoh with Eco Field Trips. Students embraced the opportunities to get their hands dirty, and learn many exciting new skills, such as using a scientific key to name various invertebrates, pan for tin, paint, using hematite stone and roast marshmallows, just as a few examples! I am sure that each student has arrived home with many exciting stories from their trip. Please visit the following link to see pictures of the entire 4th Grade during the trip.  Thank you to the parents for seeing their children off early in the morning, and being there to pick them up upon their return. Hopefully you were able to keep informed regarding our trip through Aspen, or Twitter. Also, thank you to Eco Field Trips for such an amazing experience for everyone. 

Novel Knockout:

Congratulations to the Reading Rubies (Vanessa, Anna, Ananya, and Ria) and to the Reading Drakons (Reem, Keshav, Brynn, Mridu)  for finishing first place and second place in the MKIS Novel Knockout competition! They have been invited to a regional competition at ISKL where they will compete against teams from other schools. A congratulations also to all of the other teams who participated in Novel Knockout by reading, working as team, and attending Novel Knockout practices over the last 3 months. 

Happy Reading!

Mrs. Hritzuk 

Upcoming Music Concert:

Costume Information: 

• Students will need to come to school in costume the morning of May 15th, and then arrive at 6:45pm in costume that evening. 

• All students should wear black bottoms (pants, shorts to the knee, or skirts past the knee are preferable) and black shoes. 

• All students need black shoes that will grip the stage. Soft soled sports shoes (no cleats) are perfect. If you don’t have black, just pick a dark color. 

• The tops need to have short or long sleeves and be school appropriate. Tops should be mostly one color. Make sure that there are no words (brand names, sports team names, life mottos, etc.) on the shirt. 4B is asked to wear BLUE again.

Mrs. Storey has uploaded all the music for the concert onto her blog.  Students can pop on over and practice singing their songs at home!      

http://mkis-esblog-lstory.blogspot.com/

Happy Easter, for those of you that are celebrating!  Thank you to Savitree for preparing some Easter treat bags for the students. They loved the special treats, and the homemade bags were very impressive!!

**Due to the upcoming field trip, Grade 4 will be celebrating the Free Dress Day on Tuesday April 22nd. Students are reminded to bring in 5RM to donate for Earth Week if they choose to dress in something other than the school uniform on that day. Suggested colors are blue (for the ocean) green (for the turtles) or orange for the tigers)

We are all very excited about the upcoming trip. Here are a few important reminders:

**Remember to check aspen frequently. We will be keeping you informed as to what we are up to throughout the entire 2 days of the trip. Aspen is your source of information for this!

**We are expected to arrive back at school around 5pm on Friday night. Again, watch Aspen to have an accurate account of where we are and when we should be arriving so that neither you nor your child are waiting too long at the school for pick up.

**Students are reminded that they should not pack ANY food. Snacks will be provided on the bus, both to and from the school, and the tour company will provide plentiful meals at appropriate times. Students have been warned that if they do choose to pack food for the trip, one of two events might happen- it could be confiscated, OR even worse, they could end up with unwanted guests in their cabins, looking for crumbs!!!

Overnight Trip to The Roots Resort

On April 24th and 25th the 4th grade students will be off campus for their overnight field trip.  During this time updates and contact numbers will be posted on Aspen several times a day.  Simply log onto Aspen using your username and password to see these updates.  Please test that you can log onto Aspen before the trip so that you will receive the updates.  

On Friday April 25th parents will receive an email informing them when the buses reach the last rest stop.  This email will have the estimated time of arrival.  Again, please ensure that Aspen is updated with your correct email address.

The ES Office

Welcome back from a well-deserved break!

There is a great deal to get caught up on since before the spring break!

Before the break, we said goodbye to Anita. She and her family are back in Italy, closer to family. Their MKIS family will certainly miss them, and many friends will treasure Anita’s time here at MKIS, but we wish them all the best of luck back in Europe!

Most recently, I want to say what a great performance by several students in 4B and throughout the elementary school over the weekend. Their hard efforts were clearly displayed in the “Pirates” performance. Mikael, Victoria and Maia sang and danced to several tunes, while Florencia was busy helping with costumes behind the scenes. Several classmates and friends showed their support in the audience, and were impressed by such a wonderful show! Great work, Pirates!

In March, we ended our Ancient China Unit. Our grande finale was a museum where students displayed their hard work. Other grade 4 classes and our Grade 2 buddies were invited in to have a look at the display. We also invited in Mrs. Chisholm, Mr. French, and Mr. Lindop, to see our efforts. Earlier in March, Mr. Lindop was a special guest speaker. Mr. Lindop (Maia's father) teaches IB History at MKIS and was very excited for the opportunity to come in and share some fascinating information about Ancient China, and some of the more famous individuals from China's past, such as Emperor Q'in, Confucius, and the only Empress of China, Empress Wu. Students learned a lot from his visit, and were even more motivated to learn about the fascinating history of China. The museum was a success, and a great way to showcase the students' hard efforts and accomplishments. Students also created videos explaining their projects. You can see the 4B videos by following the link here. Mikael and Liam also worked hard on an extension project, compiling a lot of the information they learned on Ancient China. You can see the final product here. All students did a great job sharing what they learned with our guests, both orally, and in their writing and visual display.

On March 14th, (3.14), we celebrated "Pi Day." Pi (3.14) is a mathematical number that represents the relationship between the circumference and the diameter of a circle. As a celebration, students explored this mysterious number by measuring circular objects of various sizes a, regardless of their size. As a special treat, they got to measure some pizza pie and reward themselves with a slice after all of their hard calculations!

We have been studying electricity as a class. Students have been having a great time learning about circuits and magnetism, as they get to manipulate magnets, wires, batteries and lightbulbs to create various circuits and see how they all work together. WIth these materials, there have also been able to see why circuits sometimes stop working, and to explore the properties of conductors and insulators, and the importance of each.

Fame Jr. was a smash hit, performed in March by MKIS students from grade 4, all the way up to High School. Both Marina and Kiara had been rehearsing for many hours each week in preparation for this performance, and their hard work paid off. The performance was a spectacular display of hard work, energy and natural talent by all involved. All students involved should be proud of their success!

Fourth grade was also invited to the Grade 7 Medieval Fair. The MS students shared their knowledge with the Grade 4 students through games, displays, trivia stations and various other interactive stations. It was certainly a great experience for both grades!

MAPS testing will begin on Monday, April 14th. Please remind your child to go to bed early on Sunday evening, and to start their day Monday morning with a great breakfast. This test is not meant to be high pressure or stressful, but by the nature of a standardized tests, students will most likely be feeling the pressure and apprehension related to it all. Please help them come to school calm and mentally prepared. 

***Overnight Trip to Roots (Ipoh): April 24th-25th
This trip is fast approaching! Updates and contact numbers will be posted on Aspen several times a day. Simply log onto Aspen using your username and password to see these updates.  Please test that you can log onto Aspen before the trip so that you will receive these updates.

**You can always go to our 4B Photos page to see more photos from events in our class and around MKIS