Read all about our wonderful learning adventures below! Feel free to post a comment on what your favorite part of the week was.
Literacy
Treasures:
This week, in Treasures the children worked with short /i/ words. The stories this week, followed the theme of growing up. The children read non-fiction pieces about animals and humans growing up. Their favorite story of the week was, Growing Up. They enjoyed looking at the photographs and discussing what else they could learn about the animals from just looking at the photos. We also worked with sequencing events, the children retold the story in the order that it happened.
Grammar Packets:
The children continued to work with sentence structure in our grammar packets this week. They had to determine if the sentences were statements. The children learned that a statement is a sentence that tells something and it has to begin with a capital and end with a period. Next week, the children will work with question and exclamation sentences. At the end of the week, they will become super sentence heros! Each child will create a project involving telling, asking, and exciting sentences.
Writing
This week, the children continued to learn about narrative writing. We read the story, The Kissing Hand, and talked about the small moment the author focused on in the story. The children decided that the author was writing about Chester receiving his kissing hand.
They brainstormed a list of small moments from their life. After choosing their favorite one, they zoomed in and began writing. The children will take this piece all the way through the writing process. They are currently working on their rough draft where they sketch pictures, label, and write their story. Next week, they will reread their story and work on adding detail. The children will also go back and stretch out words that they did not know how to spell. Ask your child what their small moment is, try and help them recall the event in great detail. This will help them zoom in even further and add important details to their writing next week.
Math
In Math, the children explored nickels. They identified the characteristics of a nickel and learned how to write it’s value. They enjoyed learning a poem about the nickel:
Nickel, nickel
Thick and fat
You’re worth five cents
I know that!
They also counted groups of nickels and pennies and recorded the values in cent notation. The children worked with exchanging pennies for nickels. To enhance this skill the children played, the Penny-Nickel Exchange game.
On Thursday, the children were introduced to change to more number stories. We started with one amount of pennies, added some more, and ended with a new amount.
The children also learned how to write an addition number model. They worked with a partner to create twelve addition number models. They each rolled a die, recorded both numbers, then added them together to get an answer.
Next week, we will wrap up Unit 2. On Wednesday, the children will review all the concepts from Unit 2 using Mimio vote. They will be very excited when our room once again turns into the set of, Math Review, Mimio Vote! The children become the contestants and play the game using their very own clickers. Our test will be on Thursday.
Science
We have wonderful scientists in our room! They worked very hard this week learning about living things. On Tuesday, the scientists tested their hypothesis from last week by looking at the substances in jar A and B. They were very excited to observe that they were correct. Jar A held the live contents, Brine Shrimp. The scientists learned that jar B held white sand. They observed both jars using a ProScope and magnifying glasses. The scientists discovered that not only did we have Brine Shrimp, but our jars were growing algae, which is also alive. After observing the two jars the children recorded their observations in their science notebooks.
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| Jar B - White Sand |
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| Jar A - Brine Shrimps Eggs |
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| Jar A - Brine Shrimp |
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| Observing Jars A and B |
On Wednesday, the scientists went to work on observing the contents of their nature walk bag. They had a great discussion on what was nonliving in their bags and what items had once been alive. The scientists then chose one item to photograph. Each scientist wrote a picture caption to explain what their photograph showed. They used descriptive words that we brainstormed together as a class. I have complied their pages into a class book titled, Fall Nature Walk.
On Friday, the scientists were very excited to study Crickets. They began by studying a diagram of a Cricket and discussing the different body parts. After learning all the body parts, the scientists took turns coming up to the board and labeling the body parts on a picture of a Cricket. Then the scientists worked with a partner to observe their very own Cricket. Using a magnifying box and ruler, the scientists recorded information about their Cricket. They worked very hard and drew descriptive diagrams, making sure to label the parts of their Cricket. Some of the scientists even wrote down a page worth of notes on what they learned from observing their cricket.
Thinking Skills
On Friday, Mrs. Schwarz came in for her last visit. The children worked with attribute blocks, identifying the shape, size, thickness, and color of each block. They enjoyed playing a game where one student would close their eyes and choose a block from the basket. Using their hands they would have to determine what shape the block was, if it was big or little, thick or thin, and for fun, they could try and guess the color. Then all the children compared two attributes blocks, they had to identify how many attributes the blocks had in common and how many attributes were different. This activity helped the children work on their critical thinking skills. Thanks Mrs. Schwarz, we really enjoyed your visits!
Star Student
Nate was our star student this week. Thanks Nate for sharing all about you!
Royal Reader
Thank you to Nate’s Mom, she joined us this week as our Royal Reader. The children enjoyed listening to two wonderful books, Room on the Broom and The Incredible Book-Eating Boy.
Notes:
- Don’t forget to read and return your purple poetry folder!
- We are in need of child friendly magazines or calendars for one of our science lessons next week. A note will come home on Monday, but if you find any this weekend please send them in. We need the magazines or calendars by Wednesday, October 17th.
- If you are interested in ordering any books from our scholastic book order, please do so by this Wednesday. I will place the order after school. Thank you to those of you who have already placed orders, you are helping to support a love of reading and earning free books for our classroom!
- Please send in your Pumpkin Carving slips as soon as possible. Thanks!
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