Week of 2-1-10

Wow! Already February! That is hard to believe! I hope you all had lots of fun in the beautiful snow! We took Eli out for his first real experience with snow.....he wasn't impressed! :) I think he wondered where his dirt, leaves, and sticks were, as well as the warmth!!

Here's our plans for this week:

Reading - Biographies and biography poster Skill - Cause and Effect We will add 6 new vocabulary words to our word wall as well. I'm so proud of what great readers your children are! We spend 2-20 minute sessions daily reading...1 with a book I choose focusing on a genre and doing reading response activities with it and 1 with a book they choose. The best way to become better readers is to simply READ. I highly recommend encouraging reading at home as well! I'm sure many of you do!

Math - We will finish up long division this week. We will also, as always, review previously learned concepts. I will throw in some geometry this week too!

Social Studies - We will begin learning about the Midwest region of our great country! We will start on Monday learning about the states that make the midwest up as well as important land features and products found there. On Tuesday, the children will begin an independent study of the midwest. They will read a variety of nonfiction books, articles, and passages about topics and people like skyscrapers, railroads, Henry Ford, Sitting Bull, and Laura Ingalls Wilder! They will view videos on Lewis and Clark and the Wright Brothers. This unit of study will last about 2 and half weeks with our locations and capitals tests falling at the end of that 2 and half weeks. I will send home a study guide this week sometime.

English - Pen pal letters and a review of previously learned concepts The pen pal letters will be to a 4th grade class at Adams Elementary. We will get to know each other over the next several months through letters and then in May, we will meet them for real at Leonardo's! Exciting!

Spelling - List 18 on spellingcity.com - soft and hard "c" and "g" words. List 18.5 is the enriched list.

Remember that Friday will be our Chinese New Year celebration. Don't forget to send the $2 in. It should be a fun day with our kindergarten buddies!

Space Habitats!

The children did wonderful constructing their space habitats! They worked well with their teammates and were great problem-solvers! Take a look at how this project began and how it looked when it was completed. They want to have a game and read and feed inside their habitats. They will have to work extra hard to earn that privilege! When they do, I will let you know. It will be a fun time and when it's over, I will draw a name from each group to win the habitat to take home!

These are the instructions they had to follow.

We will start geometry next week. Guess what we will be looking at to figure out faces, edges, and vertices of a cube!

Anyone's child missing jeans?

We have a pair of button up Abercrombie jeans size 8 in our classroom that no one wants to claim. They are cute, expensive looking jeans. If these jeans seem familiar to you, please email me. :)

Chinese New Year postponed!

So sorry! Due to an unforeseen circumstance, we have to postpone our Chinese New Year celebration until next Friday, February 5th. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused! We will send a new letter about the new date tomorrow. Hopefully, all of you that signed up to help, can help next Friday instead. :) We are still collecting the $2. You can send it anytime this week. Thanks for all you do!

Chinese New Year!

Each year we celebrate Chinese New Year with our kindergarten buddies! This year we are celebrating a little early. We will be doing activities and having a Chinese feast this Friday. I am sending home a note about it today. Please look for that note. I apologize for the short notice, but we were waiting on a parent in Miss Jenkins class regarding this celebration. New China will be catering our feast! Please send $2.00 to help cover the cost. Thank you! If you can come and help to serve and clean up, that would be awesome! Our feast will be at 2:00. Please come at 1:45 though to set up. It should be over around 2:30. Please let me know if you are planning on coming. Thanks again!

Week of January 25th

Hey families!

Announcements: The school geography bee is today. The children who chose to participate in our class bee were Austin, Cadyn, Holly, Kaylee, Beau, Clay, Nick, and Riley. Clay came in first, with Beau and Nick in a tie for second! These three will represent us in the school bee this afternoon. I am very proud of all eight of them!
Next week we will be making space habitats! This is a very fun project!! The project will involve math, science, and teamwork!! I will post pictures! We need to borrow fans. If you have a portable fan (preferably round), could we borrow it? We need 6 on Thursday of next week.
Haiti donations are due Monday. Thanks to all who have donated already!
Solar System Models are due Friday.
If anyone can copy for me next week, I would appreciate it! Just let me know by email.

Here's what's ahead for the week:

Reading - We will finish up our realistic fiction books. The kids will do a setting project with their story. We will continue to add new vocabulary words too.

Math - Long division

English - Adjective review, comparative adjectives

Science - Planet info, Earth specifics, Meteor experiment, Space habitats

Social Studies - Abe Lincoln, Pocahontas, Rosa Parks, SE history test on Tuesday - Notes went home yesterday for this test. :)

Spelling - spellings for "o" List 17 on spelling city. List 17.5 is the enriched list.

I'm SO PROUD of your children!

Your kids are pretty special! We received a letter yesterday requesting help with Haiti relief. I read the letter, but when I got to the part that said, "The class that brings the most items wins a cookie party.", the kids realized "on their own" that something was wrong with that! They, along with myself, feel like we should be helping out, but not because we are going to get something out of it. I am extremely proud of them for getting this concept on their own. It shows compassion, intrinsic motivation, and a generous spirit. Wow! Praise them! We thought it would be really cool if we tried to win this contest and then "pass" on the cookie party. So let's get collecting!! I will get my items this week! Please help if you can!

In other news, the enrichment words will be "u" words listed on spellingcity.com. We've already done r, s, and t words. My years tend to blend together. :)

Week of 1-19

Hey families! Here's the agenda:

Reading - skill focus: setting We will continue independent reading of our realistic fiction books. The children will do a comprehension paper, take an AR test, and do a project when done with the book.

Math - division

Spelling - plurals-list 16 is on spellingcity.com, enriched words-I think we are on the "r" words.

English - plural nouns, helping verbs

SS - SE partner project presentations, taking notes on important info, Pocahontas video and related work, Thurs. - location test, Fri. - capital test

Science - stars, meteors

Spelling Bee winners and other info!

We were running behind on our class spelling bee, so we had the playoff today instead of Wednesday. Our spelling bee winners are Brielle and Price! Yeah! So proud of them and all my participants! I don't really know what list they will use in the school spelling bee tomorrow, but I would make sure you know the list you have just to be sure you're ready. I sent home extra copies yesterday.

I sent home a science homework project today. The project is constructing a 2-D or 3-D model of the solar system. The paper I sent home has all the details listed. Make sure you ask your child about it.

I have decided to postpone the SE region history test until the week of the 25th. I forgot that we don't have school on Monday. That will give us a little breathing room between tests!

FYI - Tests coming up!

I handed out a study guide for the SE region location and capital tests today. The location test will be next Thursday and the capital test will be next Friday. The kids and I discussed how important it is to not wait until the last moment to study. I told them to put it on their frig and practice a little everyday. :) The children are doing great with their SE topic study. We will probably take our SE history test next Tuesday. The kids will teach their classmates about their topic of expertise and we will take notes of important info at the end of this week. Then, we will put the info in chronological order. The kids will take their notes home on Friday to study for the test on Tuesday. This test should not be too hard if they pay attention in class.

Week of 1-11-10

Hi families!

It was a great 3 days back from Christmas break even though it is WAY TOO COLD! Next week it should hopefully be in the 30's and 40's! Never would I have thought that I would celebrate 30 degree weather!

Here is the agenda for this week:

Reading - skill focus - sequencing We will continue reading our realistic fiction books, writing about the main idea of each chapter as we go.

Math - large number multiplication The first 2 days were pretty tough for many of the kids, but I taught a trick method on Friday that seemed to really catch their attention! Most did awesome with it! We will do one more day of the "lattice method" and then the kids can choose which method they want to use -traditional or lattice. There is usually more than one way to get to the right answer! Be sure to look at your child's papers to see if he/she is understanding the multiplication and give him/her some one on one time if he/she isn't seeming to grasp the concept yet. Sometimes a one on one session is all the kids need! In the classroom it's one on 23!! If your child still doesn't know his/her multiplication facts, please continue to work DAILY with him/her.

Spelling - /er/ sounding words I will post the list on Monday. There will be no enriched spelling this week because of a class and school spelling bee. The children that were interested in the spelling bee should have taken home a study list before Christmas break. We will have a class spelling bee on Wednesday of this week. The class winners will compete in a school bee on Friday.

English - possessives We will also scan our realistic fiction books for simple subjects.

Social Studies - This week the children will work with a partner on researching an important historical person, event, or place in the SE region. They will do 2 assignments on their topic in class and then present the information they found to the rest of the class. We will then decide on the most important piece of info about each topic and take notes. There will be a test over these notes next week. We will also put this important information in chronological order so they understand that Pocahontas did not live at the same time as Martin Luther King Jr. :) I will also send home a study guide for the location test and the capital test of the SE. The test will be next week.

Science - space We will look at the planets, the sun, and the seasons.

Spanish does not start back again until January 20th.

That's it for now. Check back again for updated info!

January 6-8

Happy New Year! Hope your Christmas break was great! Mine was very special with our new addition!

This is what's ahead for the next 3 days:

Reading - skill - context clues We will also be beginning a realistic fiction book to be read independently in class and discussing the literary elements that go with it.

Math - double digit multiplication

Social Studies - SE region We will look at the physical features, products, and places of interest in the Southeast region of our country. The children will find the states and capitals that make up the SE region as well.

Science - space

English - prepositions We will also be using our fiction book to locate action verbs and apostrophes.

There will be no spelling this week.

I'm looking forward to seeing the kids again! I miss them!