Plant Roots and Word Roots

The students began their day by listening to each others' writing assignments about their Thanksgiving festivities.  They wrote about sweet potatoes, grandparents, cranberry sauce, travel, and all the other things Thanksgiving memories are made of!  We are working a lot on writing in complete sentences.  At home, spend time helping them recognize where one sentence should end and another begin.  They have come a long way in 15 weeks!

In art class, Ms. Bev showed the kids how to make some amazing Christmas ornaments, using fabric scraps!  The mental focus during this one hour class was just amazing.  They worked hard, and it showed!

 Math class was all about measurement today!  We worked with non-standard units of measurement, using paperclips, markers, and counting cubes as measuring tools.  I explained to the class that you can only measure with units that are a consistent size.  You cannot simply say "build a ship that is 94 shoes long!"  The class measured different classroom objects.  Then, each one stretched out onto a large sheet of paper.  We made marks at their feet and head.  Then, they used markers as units of measurement to see how many markers high they each are.  They will be working more with measurement at home over the week.

In Spanish class, the kids showed off their house models, where they cut out different household items and placed them into a box.  They hung lights from the top, made carpet on the floor, and decorated the walls with pictures of tables, chairs, and other furniture.  They labelled each item with its Spanish name.

Science time was pretty action packed!  The class showed off the models of the parts of a plant that they completed at home.  Then, Ms. Caroline and the students discussed the experiment with the two different flowering plants.  One has been watered and in the sun for 3 weeks.  The other was kept in the dark, with no water.  The results were pretty clear.  The students documented the results in their lab books.  As an extra test, we gave the dying plant water and sunlight.  We will check back to see if it is about to bounce back!

The class learned about seeds today, as well as the life cycle of a plant.  Ms. Caroline took the kids to the yard on a seed scavenger hunt!  They found seeds, as well as other plant parts, and brought them inside to discuss their findings.  Finally, they created collages from their treasures. 

In Language Arts class, the students worked a lot with root words and suffixes.  We reviewed the rule that you double the final consonant before adding a suffix that begins with a vowel, such as stop and stopping.  Further, I discussed with the class that this double consonant results in a short vowel sound.  For instance, the extra "p" turns hoping into hopping and turns moped into mopped.  I was really able to tell that this concept has been taught at home in their lessons!  They all worked examples on the board.  They also worked on recognizing the root words and suffixes in words such as jumped, underlining the root words and circling the suffixes.

The class reviewed the spelling list, as well.  In this list, they work with "oi" and "oy".  They seem to have much less difficulty with this concept than the "ou" and "ow" list!  We played a game where the students had to stand up if the word had an "oi" and sit when the word had an "oy".  As I called out the words boil, toy, spoil, and so on, the kids bopped up and down appropriately.

At the very end of class, we squeezed in enough time to head across the street and check out the chicks that were hatching!  We had 35 eggs in the incubator, and they were hatching like crazy!  I was glad they had a chance to see the action!