Miracle Monday!

We did it! Everything I planned to happen today got completed including initial sharing of the Geography projects. YEA!

The projects were fantastic! We had our class museum today where we all got to stroll around the room and see everyone's hard work. Tomorrow, each child will share their project to the class. I will ask the children to consider these things while sharing:
1) How they decided the land form terms to use.
2) What they learned from completing this project.
3) How this project can help them with other learning and real life.

We have begun our new unit in math. The skills that we will focus on are fact families, fact extensions, completing "What's My Rule" tables, number sense, number stories, and partial sums algorithm. You will find in your child's homework folder a Do-Anytime Activities letter. These are some ideas of how to extend the skills at home in a real world setting. It's important for the children to see that what they are learning is applicable to their every day life. You will notice that the activity sheet goes all the way to unit 5. Don't worry if your child doesn't understand some of it yet. Just wait till we are actually in that unit. Tonight they have page 31 in their workbook. We began our work on fact families today. If you take a look at page 30, you will see that they are learning how to format these fact families and how the number sentences can be written differently.

Please continue your work at home with Dance Mat. I would really like the children to work to stage 9 or 10 by the end of this week. I did notice last week that many children were able to find the letters with more ease as a result of this practice. As soon as they complete the chart, please sign it and have them bring it back to me as well as any printed certificates.

This week in Science, we will continue our study of the scientific process by completing a new experiment. This experiment, using bouncing balls, will introduce the idea of a variable in an experiment. I have also sent home an experiment project that is due on Friday. We reviewed this in class this morning. As the letter indicates, they are to complete two of their choice. However, if they want to do more than 2 for extra credit, I applaud their efforts. If you have any questions about the format, please don't hesitate to let me know. In our discussion, I did encourage the children to think of another way to approach the experiment using their knowledge of an hypothesis and now a variable.

Please don't forget to turn in the Book Logs from home. Once your child turns in the book log, I will give them another one to bring home. The children are also keeping one at school. They get credit for all the reading that they do whether in a structured lesson or independently. We are still working on how to choose a "just right" book.

We will complete our Wordly Wise Lesson 2 work this week. There will be a quiz on Friday. I will have the children complete the comprehension questions and then bring home their flash cards to use when reviewing.

We are working this week on finding interesting facts about Florida. Our computer time this week will be spent categorizing these facts(people, tourism, economy, etc) and preparing a mind map using the program, Inspiration to share what we have learned.

If your child did not return their signed paper envelope, please do so tomorrow. There will be more papers that need to come home on Friday. Also, please remember to sign the reading comprehension activities that come home . I will be sending another one home tomorrow and that one is due on Friday as well. Thank you very much!

Check the spelling list on the blog. Our words this week are R-Combination Syllables. Tonight the children are to put the words in abc order. You will see that the words have an r sound but spelled either with er, ar, ur, ir, er, or.

Wednesday is International Peace Day. The children have written lovely Peace poems complete with illustrations. These will be on display on Wednesday. The children are allowed to wear a shirt that either has the word peace on it or display a peace sign. However, the "bottom half" needs to follow uniform guidelines.