Marble Art!

Writing- The class showed off their writing assignments today!  Each one did a great job explaining what things would be like if their toys could talk.  We talked about sentences, remembering that they have to start with a capital letter and end with a punctuation mark.  The class really seems to be enjoying writing for their friends!

Handwriting- The border sheets for this week were beautiful!  The class was excited to hand them in, hang them up, and get a "star"!


"Make & Do"- Ms. Ben taught the students how to paint with marbles today!  They learned about primary and secondary colors.  The marbles rolled through the primary colors, one at a time, on the paper in their boxes.  After two or more primary colors, they were able to see the secondary colors.  They loved this activity, and made some beautiful pictures!

History- Next week, our class will be entering their very own voting booth and casting their (silent) ballots!  Ms. Allison has been teaching the class about our voting process.  They know the two candidates, but parents may need to delve into the differences between the parties at home.  In history, the class reviewed what they had read about the the pharaoh, Hatshepsut.  Because Hatshepsut dressed as a male in order to be the pharoah and lead the country, Ms. Allison helped the class to make beards to wear! Oh, and those mud bricks that they worked on a couple weeks ago turned out great!

Math- In math class today, the students learned a mental math strategy for adding two one digit numbers whose sum is great than ten.  The strategy involves splitting the smaller number into parts, so that the larger number can be made to equal 10.  For instance, in the problem 9 + 5 = ___, you can break the 5 into a 4 and a 1.  The 1 can be mentally combined with the 9 to make the 9 a 10, which leaves you with the more simple problem of 10 + 4.  If the class can learn this technique, they will be able to build upon it as their math needs grow!  I will post a video of this strategy on the homework hideout page so that parents can see exactly what we did in class.

Spanish- In class today, Ms. Rose and the children reviewed the seasons, months, and weather.  They used the song they have been learning at home to help them whenever they were stuck!  Afterward, Ms. Rose taught them the Spanish words for facial features: eyes, nose, mouth, etc.  They labelled a face with the correct Spanish words.

Science-  Today was our first biology lesson!  After explaining what biology is, Ms. Caroline discussed the different ways that animals are classified, or sorted.  They did an activity where the class was sorted by hair color, by gender, by clothing color, etc.  They learned the meaning of "characteristics", and will be using this in future science lessons.

Language Arts- We discussed the spelling list for the week, and read out loud from our Tiptoes book.  The students were excited to discover that the words from the spelling list are in the reading... who knew!  The class learned about syllables.  We worked on separating words into syllables, and learned that often the syllables are separated between two consonants, such as in tur/tle.  At first, the kids had a difficult time with single syllable words, as they wanted to clap each letter.  I explained to them that the vowel sounds determine the number of syllables.  If there is only one vowel sound (as in "cat"), then it only has one syllable!  In grammar, we reviewed the definition of a noun. The class will be getting into the "idea" part of nouns... happiness, sadness, joy, freedom, etc.  This is a difficult concept to learn, so I want them to all be sure to have the "person, place, and thing" part of the definition down before moving on!  At home, work on pointing out nouns in sentences whenever possible.