Chemistry Ends with a Bang!

Writing- I really enjoyed reading the students' papers today!  Each child thought about the super hero that they would like to become.  They made up super hero names, described their costumes, and explained what they would do as a super hero.  As always, I kept these writing assignments for their writing folder.

Art-  Today was Ms. Bev's first day of art class. The class worked on a sewing project.  They learned the colors of the rainbow (ROYGBIV), how to thread a plastic sewing needle, and how to stitch a rainbow!  They did not get finished today, but it wasn't for lack of focus!  They absolutely loved this project, and went back to it during free time throughout the day!

History- The class has been reading about Egyptians and Nubians in "The Story of the World".  In their reading, they learned that when Egypt defeated the Nubians, the Nubians gave gifts to the Egyptians. Wall carvings show the Nubians giving gifts of incense, gold, ebony, furs and MONKEYS!  In class today, the students made gold cuffs, which the Nubians wore on their arms.  They also made sock monkeys, to symbolize the Nubians' gifts for the Egyptians!

Math- In math today, the lesson was on position, direction, and ordinal numbers.  First, the class had to learn their left from their right.  They used words that describe position to give directions and describe the location of items in the class.  Then, we used left, right, and other terms to find locations on a grid.  Although the kids did a good job with this, I suggest working on left, right, and counting steps on a graph (see textbook page 59 for an example).  Once the students demonstrated that they could give directions using left, right, up, and down on the grid, we moved to ordinal numbers.  The class already knew the terms "first", "second", "third", etc, and of course know their cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3), but learned today that the words can be written in ordinal numbers, "1st", "2nd", "3rd", etc.  They will be working more with these concepts at home this week.

Spanish-  The class reviewed the days of the week and months of the year today.  If you are not listening to the music at home, it really helps with memorization!  Ms. Rose was talking to the class about the months and seasons when she realized that the class wasn't familiar with which months fell in which season.  So, she switched gears and taught a lesson on months and seasons.  The class learned the Spanish words for each season along with the months.  They used construction paper to represent each season.  As they sang the seasons/months of the year song, they pointed to each season as they said the word.

Science-  Today was the very last day of our chemistry unit!  The class had a review activity, where they cut and pasted vocabulary words and definitions. They began this in class, but will work on it as a review of the unit at home over the week.  To send off our chemistry unit in style, Ms. Caroline brought in Mentos and Coke... leading to some VERY amazed reactions from the kids!

In language arts today, we read in our Tiptoes Book.  We worked on the rule about double s, f, and l at the end of a word... This usually means that the vowel is a short sound!  We worked on this rule as we reviewed our spelling words, read aloud, and even in handwriting today.  The students also have been working on using capital letters at the beginning of their sentences, and ending each sentence with punctuation.  This is something that they know, but have a hard time remembering to do!  This is definitely something that needs to be practiced at home, as well!