Our Incredible Bodies

We finished up our paper bodies this past week, and everyone was very excited to share them with their families. Our youngest students might not have gotten all of the vocabulary this time around, but I was impressed with how many of them were casually talking about their esophagus, nerves, and arteries. I know that when they hear talk about their immune or cardiovascular systems these words will be associated with what they have drawn, experienced, read about, and watched.

Even as we learned about our bodies, our kids used some impressive muscles outside this week on the rope bridge they had created and as we pulled down the tent in anticipation of snow. Morgan gave me a skeptical look when I said we were going to tackle it on Monday (2 of our fourth graders were absent which meant we had less muscle and leadership than usual). She became a believer as we hauled down the tarp, folded it, and carried all of the tables to the playhouse or the garage. Incredible bodies indeed!

Morgan's PK and K Class

* Enjoyed the dress up clothes and coming up with elaborate stories to go with their outfits!

* Explored sand, coffee, slime, baking soda and vinegar, clay, play dough.

* Worked with bingo dabbers, pattern blocks, oil pastels, Legos, clear nature blocks, big floor and small puzzles, dominos.

* Played many games of ABC, color/shape and number bingo.

* Used the beginning drawing book to try and create animals.

* Worked on folding towels, matching sizes of towels.

* Worked with dice to roll different numbers to create turkeys!

* Finished up their life-sized human bodies. They all were excited to share them with each other and their families!

* Learned about the 1st Thanksgiving story and why we celebrate Thanksgiving.

* Learned the "Turkey Pokey".

* Worked with "shine a light" books (special books that certain pages can be seen with a flashlight shining behind the page)

Please check your child's folder each day, and send in warm Fall clothing (mittens/hats/coats/boots).

Tracy's 1st - 4th Class

In second grade math, we looked at dominos as another way to model fact families, started to generate subtraction fact strategies, and looked for patterns with addition and subtraction facts. The third grade class is solving multi-step number problems involving multiplication and division as well as addition and subtraction. It takes some careful reading, and we are working on underlining the important information - something all of the grades continue to work on. The fourth graders are continuing to learn more geometry language including properties of triangles and quadrilaterals. If anyone has an extra protractor at home, please send it in!

This coming week Theresa is going to be coming into our math class to lead us through some gingerbread house math. I'm looking forward to this real-life application of our geometry and measurement lessons. Keep an eye out for a candy shopping homework assignment.

This week in our literacy lessons we were working with r controlled vowels aka "Boss R" (ar, er, ir, or, ur). We talked about how while some of them sound different, a number of them sound the same, so how do we know if it's "fur" or "fir?" Context, practice, and making a visual link with a picture were all strategies suggested by the class. Everyone is finishing up their final drafts of their fiction stories, and we are looking forward to sharing them next week.