Working Across Grades

When I was little, I had school friends who were all in my grade, and I had neighborhood friends who sort of ran in a pack and crossed ages. Our school is definitely more like my neighborhood. I really appreciate how our older kids can help read and interpret science experiment procedures for our younger kids. I also appreciate how our younger kids help our older kids not get too serious and keep their imaginations in prime working order.

Morgan's PK and K Class

*Worked on cutting/gluing skills to make the life cycle of pumpkins and find missing numbers for a math sheet! *Learned some Fall and pirate finger plays (some of the children have been interested in pirates this week from "pirate talk" to what they wear and creating pirate ships outside). * The children wanted to play bingo but wanted to use other items besides the "gold coins" so they were challenged to find small items in the pink room. Some items were too big and others to small. They ended up using dinosaurs and matchbox cars! *The children made beginning reader books then took turns reading to each other. *The children worked on counting by twos and threes to get to twelve for a bead game and bracelet making. *Enjoyed water beads, painting, Legos, magnets. * The children also learned how to make slime with the bigger children! There were some that liked it and others thought it was too sticky! * The children also liked finding the different surprises that Harold T. Gnome left in the woods!

Tracy's 1st-3rd Class

During math, we celebrated the return of "Balloon Bop," a way to practice our skip counting with a partner. Everyone reviewed telling time basics while the third graders worked on telling time to the nearest minute and figuring out more elapsed time problems. Each of the three grades has also been working on number problems, and we have been developing strategies for solving these including underlining the key parts, looking for the clues that tell us what type of problem we have, and using different organizers to help us know what we need to solve. The third graders are taking it one step further with multistep problems where they need to do two different operations (like multiply then subtract).

In our literacy time, we have really been looking for vowel teams (like ai, ay, ea, and ee) and noticing the sounds they make in words. Everyone is continuing to work on a fiction piece, and many of the children are heading into the editing process. We should have a publishing party coming up in the near future. We have been working on fluency in our reading groups, reading with expression, and paying attention to punctuation.

Theresa's 4th-6th Class

It was a lovely week with the big kids!

In writing, we have gotten into a rhythm where we write a paragraph or an essay on Monday and Tuesday, and then work on fiction on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The kids are all working on organizing their thoughts before actually writing, using graphic organizers or notes.

In math, the eldest kids are working on finding the greatest common factor and least common denominator, the younger kids are working on finding factors. It is nice to see how what the kids do in the younger grades builds up to their success at higher grades. With all the factoring, we have revisited our skip counting songs.

In reading, we are working on retelling what we have read. After each chapter, we have been stopping and paraphrasing the action from the previous week.

Our Theme: Chemistry

We had lots of fun experimenting with different recipes for slime and creating our own. Depending on whether we used liquid starch or laundry soap, the slimes we created had some pretty different properties. Of course, the amounts we added also impacted the outcome. I apologize for any slime clothes or escaping slime balls in backpacks.

We learned more about the Periodic Table and some of the elements in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Elements and Chemistry: Getting a Big Reaction. We also did two demonstrations to help us better understand the concepts of exothermic and endothermic chemical reactions. Ask your child if they can explain the difference.