Stayin' Alive

The class began the day by reading their writing assignments to their friends.  It turns out that each one of them would choose to be an animal from the cat family!  We had a kitten, a momma cat, a cheetah, and a lion.  Meow! 

This week's spelling list is a difficult one.  They are using the "ou" as in "out" and the "ow" as in "owl" sounds.  Also, they are learning that "ow" can make a long o sound, as in "bowl".  To help them with these sounds, I made up a song.  They had a good time singing it!  I hope it helps them remember!  They practiced their handwriting by writing some of the spelling words, carefully and correctly, on their page.  I try to point out how their handwriting and creative writing has improved as we progress through the year.  It's so easy to see, and gives them a visual representation of their learning!

Art- Ms. Bev had her work cut out for her today!  She and the kids used measuring cups and spoons to follow a recipe for homemade finger paint.  They learned the abbreviations Tbs, tsp, and C.  The kids were able to mix their own concoction, and even cooked it on the stove!  They added food coloring and Ms. Bev will let them paint with it next week!




History-  In Ms. Allison's class, the students have been reading about the first librarian, Ashurbanipal.  He sent scribes out all over Assyria to collect all of the tablets that they could find.  Ashurbanipal's scribes also documented traditional stories that the Assyrians passed down, orally.  These stories had never been written down until this point!  He created the first library, in Ninevah.  The class discussed the story.  Then, they created their own library book!


Math- In math class, we reviewed addition and subtraction strategies.  After noticing that many of the children were counting up for 10+ and 9+ problems, I specifically worked on mental math for these.  By the end of class, they had stopped over thinking problems such as 10 + 6, and simply exclaiming, "16!!"  For the 9+ problems, I explained that it is always a tens group (a "teen") plus one less than the other number.  For instance, 9 + 4 is just a 10 plus one less than 4, so 10+3, or 13.  It took some practice, but they had also let go over the counting-up strategy for adding 9 to a number!   The class then played an addition game.  Each child chose a card with an addition problem.  The person with the highest sum collected the cards from each player.  Try this one at home!

Spanish-  Ms. Rose reviewed all of the material that was covered so far.  They took turns writing numbers on the board as Ms. Rose called them out in Spanish.  They also took turns drawing items and representations of the seasons on the white board, as well.  Next week, the class will be learning about things inside a house.  Each child should bring in a shoe box, as they will be making a doll house in class!

Science-  In science class, Ms. Caroline taught the class from chapter 3 of their textbook.  The students learned about the needs of plants. They also learned about how plants make food.  As an experiment, the class has two identical plants.  One plant will be kept near a window and watered.  The other will be kept in the dark closet.  The kids will get to see the difference in the two plants next week, documenting their findings in their lab books.

Language Arts-  Today, we learned about root words and suffixes, and that usually, a word is broken into syllables at the suffix.  For instance, in the word "screaming", the syllables would be split between "scream" and "ing".  We worked a lot on "ou" as in "out", "ow" as in "owl", and "ow" as in "bowl".  There was a whole lot of singing as we worked our way through the spelling list!  The class also learned that the words in a title begin with capital letters.  The exceptions are those unimportant words, such as "in", "the", "a", etc.  They did talk about how the first word of a title is always capitalized, whether it is a little unimportant word or not!  Each student was given a cartoon picture.  It was a boy standing in the bathroom, reacting to a dolphin in his bathtub!  The kids had to come up with a title, using the capitalization rules that we learned.  Then, they wrote complete sentences about the picture.