Recorder : 4th Grade

Hrishika's school had taken part in karate recorder challenge in 4th grade. The students show their progress by working for various levels of belts that go on their recorder.

The following is the list of songs they need to performon recorder to earn each belt.

Hot Cross Buns – White Belt
Gently Sleep – Yellow Belt
Merrily We Roll Along – Orange Belt
It’s Raining – Green Belt
Old MacDonald Had a Farm – Purple Belt
When the Saints Go Marching In – Blue Belt
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star – Red Belt
Amazing Grace – Brown Belt
Ode To Joy – Black Belt

Here's a picture of all the belts Hrishika earned.

Art In Action : 4th Grade

Hrishika took part in "Art in Action" as an after school activity. The class would meet once every month. It was a fun class. Here are some of the artwork by Hrishika:

At the end of the year they have an art show and here is some of the artwork from the art show.

Enjoy!!!!

Stock Market Game : Award Ceremony

Hrishika's team got to attend an award ceremony for their second place win in Stock Market Game (SMG). The award ceremony was held at Bank of America in San Francisco's Financial district. Each winning team got to give a speech.

Here's the text version of their speech:

We are honored to be here today to share our experience about the Stock Market Game. Before we were in the stock market game, we all thought that the stock market was something to do with business and money. Through this experience, we learnt what Stock Market meant and how to invest our money carefully. Our biggest highlight in the game was when we found out we were in second place, all the way up from 13th place just a few days earlier. The best thing we learnt was even if the stock value is high; it doesn’t necessarily have to be good.

The way we chose our stocks, was we chose companies that we knew people use a lot, and rely on. The stocks we chose were Skechers, Fed Ex, Apple, Yum brands, Children’s Place and Scholastic. All of our stocks performed very well, except for Yum, which we traded for Microsoft.

The things we learnt about long term planning, saving and investing, are if you are not sure whether a stock will earn or lose money, do not invest in it for long-term. Also, you have to plan carefully before you buy a stock, or things might go wrong. To save money, don’t use all your money on one stock, in case that stock goes down.

Our team worked well together and we enjoyed working with each other. When we couldn’t decide on which stock to buy, we listened to each other and did what seemed more sensible. Our funny experience was when we typed in random stocks and one of them turned out to be a good stock, even though we didn't invest in it because we didn’t know what it was.

When we begin working and earning money, we will save money and invest some of it in stocks, so if our investing doesn't go well, we have a backup plan. When we think about our participation in the stock market game, the thought that stands out the most is that we learned two important things, first to invest our money wisely, and second to closely monitor our stocks, which helps us to know if we need to trade any stock. It was a worthwhile experience.

We all thank SIFMA Foundation and SIFMA member firms for making the stock market game and giving us this opportunity. We also thank Ms. Fleischer, for teaching us the stock market skills we now have. Thank you.

Here's a link from an article published in San Jose Mercury news regarding the SMG.

San Jose elementary and middle school students beat hundreds of other schools in a virtual stock market game. - San Jose Mercury News

Explorer Diary : 4th Grade

As part of the 4th grade projects, students had to write diary entries for an explorer to include some important and relevant information about the explorer in his own words. Also the students were asked to make the diary look old and worn out by using different techniques. Hrishika's had to write all about Sir Francis Drake. In the following slide show you could take a look at the different diary entries Hrishika came up with for Sir Francis Drake's diary.

School House Rock

This year Hrishika got to take part in a musical, "School House Rock". PTA hired Starting Arts, an outside company to help with the musical. Basically Starting Arts asked for 100 kids in total, so they could divide them up into 2 groups of 50 each. Each group was further divided into four sub groups (A, B, C & D). Only around 70 kids signed up for the play, however. That meant there was only one group. What that translated into was more kids in each sub-group and kids had to perform in four shows instead of just two. So Hrishika was in Group C. Each group had to learn two songs plus a third song which all the groups had to perform. Hrishika enjoyed learning and performing. It was a fun experience overall.

Science Project : 4th Grade

For her 4th grade science project Hrishika worked on a simple electric motor with a switch.


The following are the materials used for the electric motor.




Here's the elctric motor with the switch open.



Here's the electric motor with the switch closed.

Mission Brochure : 4th Grade

As part of the 4th grade projects, Hrishika had to do a mission brochure. Her mission happened to be "Mission Santa Clara De Asis". Here's her brochure.

She drew the picture of the mission on the front cover.

In the middle of the brochure she wrote about how the mission evolved over the years to it's current state.

On the back of the brochure she wrote about some important facts about the mission and a map and directions to get to the mission.

California Relief Map : 4th Grade

Each student was asked to make a California Relief Map, using dough, salt, and water. At school, first she made an outline of California on paper. Using this outline, she formed the relief map out of dough. Once the dough hardened she painted the relief map. The map was mounted on cardboard.

The following recipe was used to make the salt dough:

• Mix together 4 cups of flour and 2 cups of salt.
• Slowly pour in 1 ½ to 2 cups of water. (Add water only as needed.)
• Knead well.

Map includes the following:

• The San Joaquin River
• The Sacramento River
• The Sierra Nevada Coastal Range
• The Coast Mountain Range
• The four main regions (desert, Central Valley, mountain ranges, coast)

Field Trip : Fourth Grade

This year Hrishika's class went on a field trip to Sacramento. This was an all day (7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M) field trip and covered some of the important spots in California history. It is an important field trip for 4th graders since it covers lot of what they have learnt in social studies this year.

This field trip was different in the sense, that the kids got to ride a luxury bus instead of a school bus. They were allowed to eat food on the bus and watch DVDs. So the kids were super excited. Here are some of the sites they visited and the pictures taken. Click on the links (links appear in orange) or the picture to find out more about the places visited.

• Eagle Theater
  
  



• Sutter's Fort
  
  



• State Capitol Building
  
  



• Wells Fargo Museum
  
  Here's a link to read more about the Wells Fargo's history
  
  



• Railroad Museum
  
  Here's another link to read more about Railroad Museum History.
  
  

Here's slide show of all the pictures from the Sacramento Field Trip.

Stock Market Game

Hrishika's school offered the Stock Market Game (SMG) as an after school activity. So we signed her up for the class. The class would meet every other week for an hour. This was a great way to teach kids about the stock market in general and in the bigger picture also teaches them how to manage money. The details about this game can be found at the SMG's official website.

Each team is given a virtual amount of $100000. They have to use up but not exceed that amount and the other rule is they need to buy a minimum of 100 stocks of any given company. These are some of the stocks she and her friends decided on buying with their virtual $100000. Apple, Sketchers, Yum, Scholastic, FedEx and a few others.

Hrishika's team placed second in the entire western region. So her team was awarded a medal and a certificate of recognition. Hrishika was totally thrilled with her medal. She was sporting it all day(I don't blame her). I too was proud of her performance.