Making a Town

"Ooo! This would make a great bathtub."

"Do we have any more paper towel tubes? I want to make a cell phone tower."

"We're sharing a house, so we don't get lonely."

Conversations were buzzing as the kids continued to create their community of clothespin "peeps." After brainstorming lots of ideas, they voted on calling their town "Seaside City." On a different day they brainstormed ideas about what their town might need - fire fighters, ambulance, and police officers were some of their first ideas. But the list kept on going: farms, library, school, dentist, hospital/clinic, restaurants, blacksmith, grocery store, mechanic, repair shop, lawyers, hair salon, parks (including a beach of course), toy store, busses, airport, and post office were all added. One student even suggested a power plant which is a first in all the different years that I have done this, and her comment prompted a discussion about different power sources. It will be interesting to see how many of their ideas make the final cuts next week - with our small class, we may need to have everyone double up jobs a bit.

Morgan's PK and K Class

* Listened to stories on kindness and being back to school.

* Used bug nets to catch bugs and built bug homes for the bugs. There was a lot of conversation about what type of bugs were found and what they eat.

* Learned new poems and finger-plays for Fall!

* Explored shaving cream, foam beads, coffee grounds, watercolors, wiki sticks, water/droppers.

* Worked on their "All About Me" books and also worked on their cutting skills for creating birthday cake and candle pictures.

* Counted groups of objects.

* Made collages.

* Worked in their handwriting notebooks.

Please check your child's folder daily and send in inside shoes if you haven't done so.

Tracy's 1st - 4th Class

In math, the kids have been working on fact fluency (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). Everyone also came up with a survey question they could ask the rest of the school. They tallied the responses and made bar graphs to share their results. The fourth graders also made pie charts. We all played "Set" on Friday, and the children are developing their understanding of what makes something a set.

In writing, we are continuing to work on our research projects. We worked on the concept of an outline using a grocery store as our big idea, its departments as our subtopics, and the items we find in those departments as the facts that support those subtopics. Everyone started taking notes, and we worked hard to make sure we were writing things in our own words.

In reading, the fourth graders are reading "A History of US: Making 13 Colonies" by Joy Hakim. Once they have a solid understanding of the time, they're going to be helping me to write the play the whole school will perform in February. Another reading group has started "Clementine," and they are enjoying predicting what Clementine might do next and talking about how even the best intentions can sometimes go awry. All of the groups are doing "word work" - vocabulary and looking at word roots.