Checking In

I remember my trepidation the first year I was teaching as conference day loomed. But a few decades on, I relish the chance to check in with families. I am always intrigued to gain new insights about our students and see how behaviors play out at home versus school. It also always makes me so grateful for our amazing community and the families that share their children with us.

Morgan's PK and K Class

* Worked together using Kapla blocks to create different structures!

* Explored slime, Wiki sticks, air dry clay, foam beads.

* Worked with geo-boards.

* Used the light bright, stretch bands, fancy hole punches, pipe cleaners and beads, stencils.

* Played many number and letter identification games.

* Worked with Legos, puzzles.

* Worked on their life-sized human bodies and talked about the different body parts.

* Practiced their cutting and gluing skills. We talked about how a little bit of glue goes a long way!

* Spent time outside looking for wooly bears and making homes for them.

Tracy's 1st - 4th Class

In math, our older two grades have been working with multiples and factors. The fourth graders learned how to play "Factor Captor" and had some spirited discussions about what numbers were the best to pick at different points in the game. The third grade class has been doing multiplication and division number stories, modeling them with pictures and arrays. Our second grade class has been working on functions with frames and arrows problems as well as developing fact families through fact triangles.

In writing, we had our final research paper presentation on ninjas. There was a demonstration portion outside of different ninja tools (made by the student!) followed by the report being read inside. Everyone is now working on finishing up their final drafts of a fiction piece. We were talking about how to write interesting descriptions using a reasonable amount of adjectives. The developed this guideline - too few and it's hard to picture, too many and it becomes distracting. We also worked on identifying contractions in our writing and reading.

In reading, The Twits group finished the book, and they were very pleased with the ending. The History of US group looked closely at "Mayflower: Saints and Strangers" and "Puritan, Pilgrims, and Indians." The second chapter was particularly relevant as we approach Thanksgiving, and there were some neat historic markers around that holiday.

Theme: Human Body

Ask your child about the results from our bones experiment and how water, milk, soda, and vinegar impacted the bones. We outlined our bodies on big pieces of brown paper and started adding some of the amazing systems that help us live. We added our nervous system, circulatory system, and respiratory system. Next week, we'll add some more!