More Science Fun!

Today I only gave the students TWO supplies for their STEM challenge: playdough and toothpicks (A BIG thank you to those generous parents who sent these supplies!). It was trickier than the students anticipated... very few were successful at building a free-standing structure!

Week of September 28th

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I spent the weekend on the Stillwater fishing with my family. It sounds like Saturday Live was a great success.  Thank you so much for everything you donated to our baskets!  All the money raised comes straight back to our school and our kids, so I really appreciate it. A very special thank you to Jennie (Christian's mom) and Bonnie (Madeline's mom) for putting our baskets together!

This week in reading we will be finishing up our unit on changes. We will reinforce making inferences, drawing conclusions, using context clues and synonyms. Please remember to encourage your child to spend some time on Raz Kids at home, too!

In math we are going to spend a couple days reviewing chapter 1 skills (rounding, estimating sums and differences, and adding and subtracting larger numbers.  On Wednesday, we will take our Chapter 1 test!  Then we will start into chapter 2, where we start with learning about interpreting data from a table, or tally chart, as well as a picture graph. We will end the week learning how to use data to make our own picture graphs.

I also set up the Go Math online component.  I will put a sticky label in the front of the kids planners with their username and password to access the site. We will start putting the lesson we are on in our planners for the day. Then students can now login to Go Math and choose the interactive student edition and choose the lesson and practice those skills again.  If you have any questions with that please let me know!

I'm looking forward to a fabulous week! I am excited to celebrate Brennen's birthday on Friday! 

Week of September 21, 2015

We had a busy week last week!  Thank you to everyone who made it to open house on Thursday, if you missed it, I will be sending home some paperwork in your child's Tuesday folder so that you can have an idea what we talked about. Also, a big thank you to everyone who came to the Ice Cream Social!

In reading this week we will be reading a story called Scaredy Squirrel, and discussing how we can make changes happen.  We will be focusing on the skills of inferring (using our background knowledge and what we read to figure something out), drawing conclusions, and prefixes meaning "not." 

In writing/grammar this week we will be finishing our beginning of the year writing samples (students are writing about their favorite place). If we have time, we will write a friendly letter, too! 

In math this week we are finishing up chapter one.  We will be working still on mental math subtraction strategies.  And as I discussed at Open House, the standard algorithm is considered one strategy to use for addition and subtraction.  We will end the week working on problem solving and reviewing for the chapter 1 test, which will be given sometime next week. Hopefully I will also get students their Go Math user names and passwords this week, too. 

Upcoming Events:

• Thursday: Early Out at noon-lunch will not be served, but the kids can bring a larger snack
• Friday:  Spirit day, bring $1 and "Pack the school in purple" for Alzheimer's awareness. 
• Friday: 8:30 all school evacuation to the St. John's Lillis center for our evacuation drill.  This is just so the kids all know the procedure and where to go if we ever need to evacuate the school. 
• Saturday: Saturday Live at Pioneer Park

If you still have any items for the Saturday Live basket, please have them in by Wednesday so we can get our basket put together.  Thank you for all that you have sent in so far!

Homework due Friday: math spiral review sheet, reading log 

Artist Study

Last week we started our artist study on Vincent van Gogh. We watched a short video about his life and some of the techniques and colors he used when painting. Then we replicated his famous painting "Wheatfield with Crows" using oil pastels. This week we will be reading a book about van Gogh and then painting sunflowers in honor of his "Sunflower" painting. Here is a picture of our masterpieces from last week! :)

Math Time Fun

As a warm-up in math today we played addition war... who ever said math isn't fun is just plain wrong! Remember to practice those basic addition facts - it will make multiplication soooooo much easier! :)

Index Card STEM Challenge

Another fun, challenging STEM activity in the books! :) Well, actually we are going to continue building some more on Monday! Oh, and I had to throw in a picture of Owen's super clean desk! :)

Another STEM Challenge

Today students were asked to create the tallest free-standing structure they could using only spaghetti noodles and marshmallows. One group was so successful that they built three different structures (Way to go Takoda, Magdalen, and Camden!!). I sure loved watching the students encourage one another and collaborate with each other so well.

Happy Heart

Few things in life make my heart happier than seeing students engaged in a good book! It is so fun to see these students LOVING to read every day! Also, Carson made the world's perfect cursive "j" the other day, so I had to snap a picture! :)

Sure do love this group of kids!

STEM Challenge Fun!

Today we did our first, of many, STEM challenges! Inspired by the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, students were encouraged to build the tallest bean stalk possible using twenty-five pipe-cleaners. Ask your child to tell you what STEM stands for (they will earn them $50 if you write it in their planner!).

TESTING!!!

Mark your calendars: our class will be taking our MAP/NWEA tests on September 15th, 16th, and 17th! We will take these reading, language, and math tests once this Fall and then again in the Spring.