Happy Halloween!

We had our Halloween Party and Parade today! All of the kids looked great! We had a hockey player, a cheetah girl, a game of Twister, Smurfette, and Special Forces Agent! We played Pictionary and Wrap the Mummy. We had cupcakes, Twix candy bars, and grapes! It was such a fun afternoon. We heard two Halloween stories! Thank you to Mrs. Geisler, Mrs. Ford, and Mrs. Schneider.

Happy Halloween!

Isobel

Friday's Fun!

Hello kids! Madison escaped today before we got her blog post done, so I thought I would write a quick recap of the day for you! This morning we took our weekly assessments. We also read a book called "My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks!" It was a book full of similes. We learned that a simile compares two things, using LIKE or AS. After our Treasures test, the children all made their own similes! What a great way to make our writing more fun to read! We also brainstormed possible story topics for our personal narratives. After lunch, Mrs. Misner came in for an Art Appreciation lesson about Michelangelo. The kids then tried to color a picture- of Miss O'Sullivan- on the floor on their backs! It was a lot harder to do than it looked! Then we went to the LMC to see Mrs. Dufern. Mrs. Dufern finished our podcasts with our Arlington Heights Landmark drawings, our voice recordings, and our actual photographs if we had them. It was so fun to see and hear all of the work that each of the children did! We learned about a NEW challenge in our classroom for the month of November, its a US Landmark challenge this time! We are to choose a landmark in our country to study, and we will present them to the class at the end of November. Finally, Ava's mom, dad and older sister came to visit our classroom for Ava's star student presentation. She did an awesome experiment showing how hot air expands- it blew up a balloon! Ava read a cute Halloween story to the class! What a great day at school we had!

Have a fantastic weekend!

:) Miss O'Sullivan

Thursday'sThoughts by Madison

Today was a busy day at school. In math we were counting with tens and ones. We are working to remember to write down our assignments so we keep getting our homework stickers! We had PE and Music. We walked, skipped, galloped and ran laps around the gym. Mr. Gries is very cool and nice and funny. Margaret started her subtraction fact timed tests today! She almost beat Miss O'Sullivan at the addition facts in one minute. We took a Math Review to see what we've learned so far this year in class!

See you tomorrow!

Madison

Wednesday's Wisdom by Madison

Today we had art class. We put the finishing touches on our spooky landscapes. We watched the black marker video before we outlined our work. In class we wrapped up our Arlington Heights Unit. We made a Venn Diagram comparing early settlers with how people live today. We went over our unit tests together. We learned what a personal narrative is. Its a story about something that happened in our life. We are going to be writing our own personal narratives! The 3rd grade musical was today, it was a Halloween theme. They sang about ghosts, goblins, and bones! They danced to Thriller! They told funny jokes in between songs.

That's it for now!

Byeee! Madison

Tuesday's Tidbit by Madison

Today we practiced telling time using our own little clocks. We learned that you can tell time by looking at only the hour hand, because its always moving! We went to the LMC and we heard about all of the Dryden Dolphin Book Award books! If we read all 20 books, we can win a prize! We took a mad minute. We are getting faster at our facts every day! We read a story about a baby seal who was left behind. We practiced finding the beginning, the middle, and the end of stories.

That's all for now!

Madison

Monday's Message by Madison

We had PE and Music class this morning. Miss Chiappe's class was with our class because Mr. D was preparing for the musical. We sang songs and played 4 corners. Ava W. is our new star student. We looked at her pictures and her poster. Her poster was really cool and sparkly. It was also her birthday today! We played a game called Jeopardy because this is the end of our Arlington Heights unit. It helped us review before taking our test. The West team had 2,000 points and the East team had 1,900 points. It was a fun game. We practiced using coins by buying fruit and vegetables during math.

Byeee! Madison

Weekly Recap!

What a wonderful week we had at school. The children and I (along with Mrs. Goodman, Mrs. Domlija, Mrs. Basu, Mr. Denney, and Mr. Psarros) took a walk to the Police Department on Friday afternoon. It was a beautiful day to be outside and in the community we have been learning about. The children were outstanding listeners as Officer Doug Hajek took us through the important places of the Police Department. The children viewed the jail cells, the fingerprinting computers, the evidence room, the shooting range, and even the report room- where the officers were ready for role call! We also went outside to take a good close-up look at the police cars. Not only did we learn about the role of the police officers in our town, but we were reminded to make good choices, always tell the truth, and to use our words in situations that could be harmful. I was so proud of the stellar behavior the children showed during this trip. Way to go, class! And a special thank you to the parents for coming along!

One quick reminder before the academic recap...

* Please return your pink conference forms tomorrow if you haven't done so yet. It will help to have this information before we meet as a staff to arrange our conference schedules. We do our best to set sibling conferences back to back, and to include any specialists your child may work with at school. Thank you for being flexible, it can be a challenging task to meet everyone's requests.

Also...There was a “Hard Lock Down Drill” at school today, reminding us what to do in case of a security situation. The children were reminded that in a situation like this, they are to find the nearest secured location, stay quiet, and listen to their teachers for further direction. They did a great job during this drill!

Spelling

After working with short and long /u/ sounds this week, our pattern will become more complex next week. The children will study words that have both long and short /i/ sounds, and long and short /a/ sounds!

Reading

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was seeds and planting. We began the week listening to Jack and the Beanstalk. New oral vocabulary words include: thrive, expect, fertile, and sprout. Our whole group story was called, “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle. It was about a little seed that blows through the air with its companions. The seeds face a variety of dangers including potentially landing in the ocean and desert, blowing too close to the sun and burning up, and being eaten by birds! The children came up with a great moral to the story- the seed may have been little, but it was strong! New vocabulary words from this selection include: burst, desert, drifts, drowns, gently and neighbor. The comprehension strategy we focused on was drawing conclusions. To do this, we first identified important facts from the story. Then we put these facts together to determine what the author was intending for us to understand, without directly stating it. The children went on to practice using their context clues (reading around a new or unknown word) to determine its meaning. All of the children met with their small guided reading groups as well. In the guided reading groups we focused further on gathering facts and developing our own conclusions based on books that more closely match their reading level!

Grammar

The skill of the week was learning all about nouns (a person, place, or thing). We also identified lists of items in a variety of texts, and practiced separating them with a comma.

Math

The children’s math fact scores continue to rise! It is very clear that there is a lot of practice happening! We have reached the end of Unit 2, after working with “in and out” boxes and “frames and arrows” problems. The children have not only completed these problems using a variety of rules, but they have had to critically look at completed problems and identify the rule on their own. They had practice with equivalent names, fact families, and writing addition and subtraction story problems based on a given fact family. The children took their Unit 2 assessment this week, and we were ready to begin Unit 3! Looking ahead, the children will be working with place value, money, and time.

Social Studies

We have been learning about the great William Dunton, who not only donated land for our town, but arranged to have our first one room school house built, organized the first church, and donated land and money so the train could come through town. Did you know that our town was named Dunton from 1854 until 1874? No wonder we have a statue of him at the corner of Arlington Heights Road and Northwest Highway! Learn more by visiting these websites on the sidebar to the right! This week the children looked at how transportation has developed and changed over the course of the last 120 years, from the covered wagon, to the horse and buggy, street car, early locomotive, up to our modern transportation methods of today. We also learned why Arlington Heights was such a desireable place to settle: near the train, near the city of Chicago, fertile soil, and a good climate for farming! We also learned that “Heights” was added to our name, because our town is approximately 106 feet higher than Chicago! We discussed the benefits of living on elevated land. The children learned about several additional early families, too, including the Meyers, Klehms, and Sigwalts. Finally, we have begun memorizing the names of the towns that surround Arlington Heights. The children learned a silly sentence to help them remember... Ask them to tell you! We are ready to wrap up this unit, and move on to Citizenship this week!

As always, thank you for visiting the blog to read about our adventures in 2nd grade!

I hope you had a restful weekend full of time spent outdoors!

:) Miss O'Sullivan

Friday's Fun!

Today was a great day! We went on a field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Station. It was a nice walk. We got to go in the jail! We learned its good to use your words when there's trouble. We should always tell the truth. We should never touch a gun. It was Margaret's star student day! Her mom, dad and her little sister Charlotte came to school! Her experiment was really good.

What was your favorite part of the field trip?

Have a good weekend!

:) Macy

Thursday's Thinking by Macy G.

Today we had PE and Music. We did rotations during class. In music we sang the Arlington Heights song! We learned the names of the towns that surround Arlington Heights. We learned a silly sentence to help us remember them! It was "Buffalo walk past me every rolling path!" Kids, can you name the cities? We also learned that the first fire truck was called "Old Faithful."

Have a nice day!

By Macy

Wednesday's Wisdom by Macy G.

Today we took our Math test. We practiced problems on our slates before we took the test.We had art class. We finished our Haunted House paintings. We wrote in our journals about which story we would like to jump inside of. In social studies we talked about early transportation. Long ago they used horses to pull their cars! Did you know that Arlington Heights is higher than Chicago? Its the end of our unit, we are almost done learning about our town.

Quiz question for the kids: Can you name all of the names of our town before it was Arlington Heights??

Have a nice day!

Macy G.

Tuesday's Tidbit by Macy G.

We went to the library today. We finished our Arlington Heights landmark pictures. There were a lot of moms helping us to record our voices with our landmark on the computer. We read a story called the Tiny Seed. We learned how to draw conclusions. We learned that not all seeds can grow into plants. Today was a very fun day!!

That's all for now!

:) Macy

Monday's Message by Macy G.

Hey everybody! I am the new blogger, Macy! Today was a great day at school. We took our spelling pre-test. We had PE and Music class. We had Mr. Gries again now that Mr. Staehlin is gone. We did several stations. One was the climbing wall, another was jumping rope, and one was throwing bean beags and the last one was lifting weights. We got some new books for our classroom book bags. We started learning the names of the cities that surround Arlington Heights, like Wheeling and Buffalo Grove!

More tomorrow!

:) Macy

Fall Greetings!

Hello!

Thank you for popping in to visit our blog and read about our week at school! I have to quickly start off by saying what a wonderful job the children did on their first book reports! It was apparent that not only did the children read their book carefully, but they took this project very seriously. They were happy and eager to have the spotlight for a moment to talk to their classmates about their book. Thank you for helping your child- these reports were a huge success- they were thoughtful, creative, and informative! (I attached some photos of the children and their reports to the sidebar on the right.) The children are so lucky to have such supportive families!!

Spelling

This was a Treasures "review" week. The children were challenged to choose 10 of their very own spelling words to practice! I was pleased to see that they chose interesting words that were appropriate to the time of year, our learning at school, and their ability level! As we begin Unit 2 next week, we will focus on words with the long and short /u/ sound!

Reading

Being a review week, the children prepared for and completed their first reading Unit Assessment this week. We were able to meet several times with our small guided reading groups! As the children are practicing their decoding reading skills during these groups, we have also begun developing our comprehension strategies as well. While they are reading, I will ask the children to pause to: make a connection, visualize, ask a question, make a prediction, make an inference, or even to think about their background knowledge about the topic. All of these strategies challenge the children to really think about what it is that they are reading. You may see post it notes come home that have snippets of information about a book (or Time for Kids newspaper!) and now you know why! Feel free to give your child 2-3 post-it notes while they are reading at home to connect to their reading and strengthen their comprehension while they are away from school, too! (As these are strategies that we are currently developing, they will initially need some guidance.)

Math

Math fact strategies we have practiced include “doubles +1”, the “doubles in between”, and they learned about the numbers that “make a ten!” I am very pleased to see their comfort level with these strategies strengthen! The latest addition to our list of strategies is "+8". I am very interested to see how the children perform on our next timed test, as they are moving very quickly through these isolated skills! During our lessons this week, we explored the concept of weight using a pan balance and a spring scale. The children learned that there are 16 ounces in a pound, and 8 ounces in half of a pound. They also reviewed name collection boxes and worked to find several different names for a given number. We worked with "in and out" boxes, as well as "frames and arrows" problems that encourage the children to identify the rule that is followed each time. We are nearing the end of Unit 2!

Social Studies

During our lessons this week, the children reinforced the information they have been learning about regarding traveling west and living on the prairie. The children watched a short video on Monday about Pioneer Life, and we paused it periodically to jot down important information we had heard on post-it notes. On Tuesday, the children were challenged to write 2 paragraphs with their new learning- one was about traveling west, and the other was about after they had arrived and began to settle into their new environment. The children developed a main idea and come up with details to match. It was fascinating to see the children's learning come through in their writing in this way! They learned to indent and organize their information! I can't tell you how amazed and pleased I was to see the final published versions of their writing. These are hanging in our hallway at school.

The children also learned about the early founding families of Arlington Heights, including the Miner, Kennicott, and Dunton families. Ask your child to tell you what they know! Aside from the the wonderful contributions of these families, next week we will learn about the contributions of several other important characters, including Charles Sigwalt, the Meyer Family, and the Klehm family! We did drop into the LMC on Friday afternoon for a bit to begin the drawings of our Arlington Heights Landmarks. I have already received a handful of photographs of the children near their landmark, thank you so much for sending them! What an authentic way to show the children that what they are learning has a direct connection to their town today. Thank you for your support!

Coming up this week is our field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department. Not only will we learn that Charles Sigwalt had a hand in developing the early Police/Fire organizations, but this trip will also connect nicely to our next Social Studies unit- Citizenship! The children will learn about the services provided to their community with tax money, and this is a perfect example. If you are a parent volunteer arranged through Mrs. Geisler, please arrive to school no later than 12:50! We will leave promptly at 1:00 for a brisk 30 minute walk to the Police Department. Please please please- dress your children for the weather, including comfortable shoes. Thank you!

There is so much to cover, hopefully I touched on the highlights for you!

Thank you for visiting the blog!!

:) Miss O'Sullivan

Friday's Feature by Cal

Today was a great day at school. It was Spirit Day, which means we wore Dryden clothes, or red and white. We shared our book reports. They turned out awesome. They were all very different! There were a few WANTED posters, one live mermaid, a blog diary, and two kids did book talks. We read a cute story about a runaway pumpkin. We started our Arlington Heights Landmark drawings in the library.

Have a great weekend!

:) Cal

Thursday's Thoughts by Cal

Today we practiced "In and Out" boxes during math. There is a rule that tells you to add or subtract, and you solve a bunch of problems with that rule. In PE we played King Pin again. We were much better today than the last time. In music class we played a new game called "Call Captain." The captain names an instrument, and then the kids holding that instrument card had to run and switch places. This was a good review of the instruments we learned on Tuesday. In Social studies we talked about the coming of the train to our town. William Dunton donated $250 for the train to come and he donated the land too. We looked at the Arlington Heights Glog that is attached to our blog, its full of facts about Arlington Heights! Some kids helped Mrs. Fuglestad make inflatable street art in the shape of a ghost. It blew up and seemed to come to life!

From, Cal

Wednesday's Wisdom by Cal

We wrote 2 paragraphs at school during writing today! One paragraph was about traveling west in a covered wagon. The second was about living on the prairie. We practiced indenting our paragraphs. We started with a main idea, and then we wrote details. In art class we painted grass and sky on our spooky landscapes. We decided to make a BIG balloon in the shape of a ghost as an inflatable street art project with Mrs. Fuglestad. We talked about family life on the prairie and learned what prairie children did for fun.. Did you know they made toys out of wood? The girls made dolls out of corn husks. In math we practiced frames and arrows.

Bye-bye!

Cal

Tuesday's Tidbit by Cal

Hello 2nd graders! We had PE today. We played King Pin. We went to music and we named instruments! We named the flute, the xylophone, the violin, the cello, the harp, the trombone, the electric bass, the clarinet, the saxophone, the tuba, and the string bass. We had an extended fire drill. We learned where to go on the field to wait if there was a real fire. We chose our own spelling lists. We learned about ounces and pounds. We practiced name collection boxes.

It was a full day at school!

Sincerely, Cal

Weekly Update!

Hello!

Thank you for visiting the blog and reading about our week at school. It certainly was a full few days!

* The children had their school photos taken on Monday

* We took our field trip to the Arlington Heights Historical Museum, the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, and North School Park for lunch. It was such a beautiful day! The children were very well behaved, fantastic listeners, and took so much from this authentic learning experience! I hope you were able to get a feel for our day by viewing the photos in our field trip slideshow. Thank you to Mrs. Geisler, Mrs. Walsh and Mrs. Erickson for coming along!

* Congratulations to the

Erickson family!! They are the winners of our classroom project, "Family Game Night!" They were so excited to receive the box full of items for a night of family fun at the Progressive Dinner on Friday. Mrs. Erickson sent in this adorable photo of one very happy Lily! Congratulations!! Thank you all for participating, I understand it was a wonderful event and a prosperous fundraiser for our school.

Spelling

We worked this week on words that have the short and long /o/ sound. Next week we will have a review week, and the children will be taking a reading assessment covering all of the reading and writing skills we covered in Unit 1.

Reading

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was “Coming to America.” We kick off every new theme building our background knowledge by talking about the topic. New oral vocabulary words include: custom, journey, liberty, greet and varied. We talked a lot this week about immigrants who come to America- including the reasons they may come here as well as the customs they bring along with them. Our whole group story was called, “My Name is Yoon.” It was about a little girl who moved to America from Korea. Our comprehension strategy was making predictions, so the children paused throughout the story to think about what was going to happen next. All of the children met with their small guided reading groups as well. Each group read from the genre of historical fiction. We learned that historical fiction is a story that was created by the author based on historical events. In our guided reading groups we focused further on this genre, we practiced our decoding strategies, and we noticed our weekly vocabulary words! Our new vocabulary words from this week included: cuddle, favorite, patient, practiced, settled, and wrinkled. The children also worked this week to identify words with inflected verb endings. We noticed that the ‘ed’ and ‘ing’ at the end of words give us information about when the word is taking place- in the past or in the present!

Grammar

The children practiced identifying compound subjects and predicates, as well as combining sentences to create them on their own. We also worked to identify and incorporate quotations marks into sentences!

Math

After focusing on our +9 math facts, the children have been memorizing their numbers that "make a ten." (1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5) This particular skill will come in handy when adding two digit numbers! We went on to practice fact families this week, through the use of dominoes and fact triangles. The children were quick to see that each fact family has 2 addition and two subtraction facts! We practiced writing subtraction story problems based on these fact families, making sure to include a unit box (something to count) and a number model (equation).

Social Studies

The children reviewed that people require food, clothing and shelter for survival. We discussed how the area we live in now was once a vast prairie inhabited by the Potowatomi Indians. The children learned many different ways they used the land to survive- building their wigwams out of bendable branches and covering them with bark; hunting, gathering and cultivating food from the land, and even making their clothing out of animal skin and decorating it with feathers and quills. We learned that they created trails by traveling the same path over time, and eventually we paved those trails into our present-day roads and highways. (Did you know that Arlington Heights Road was once Potowatomi Trail?) We were also learned how the settlers moved into the area, forcing the Potowatomi to move west of the Mississippi River due to the Indian Removal Act of 1830. We were happy to know they left peacefully and were given a small amount of money. Finally, the children learned what it was like to travel in a covered wagon. We learned about dangers on the trail, the best location in the wagon train, and what would happen if the settlers encountered a steep hill, mountain, or even a river they had to cross. The children have begun "packing" their own covered wagons and illustrating life on the trail. They will write about their work next week as we learn about the early settlers that rolled into Arlington Heights in the late 1800s.

The children were each given an Arlington Heights Landmark to learn about during our time in the LMC! As an added challenge, take a picture of your child (or your family!) in the location of that landmark today- whether it is still there or not! You can email them to me (kosullivan@sd25.org) and we will add them to the children's research podcasts!

Field Trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department

Thank you for returning your field trip permission slips so quickly for our upcoming trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department! There is so much to learn about while studying our town, we are happy to have another authentic learning opportunity "in the field" on this upcoming trip. Please send in the permission slip if you haven't yet done so! And thank you to those of you that volunteered to come along! I understand we have 6 parent chaperones. I will send a reminder note home a few days before the trip, but please arrive to school by 12:50 on October 21st. We will leave promptly at 1:00!

I hope you are enjoying this beautiful weekend!

Happy Columbus Day!

:) Miss O'Sullivan

Thursday's Thoughts by Ria

Today was the last day of our week at school. We took our quizzes in DOL, Grammar, and Spelling. We practiced word work before taking our spelling test. We had PE and Music. In PE we played Battleship. We have to try to knock the other team's pins down that surrounded their battleship. In music we sang new Halloween songs! In social studies we learned more about how the Potowatomi used the land to survive, and how they had to leave this area because of the Indian Removal Act. We packed our covered wagons and headed west!

Have a nice sunny weekend!

Ria

Wednesday's Wisdom by Ria

We had a busy day at school. We read a story about a little girl named Yoon. She didn't know English and she didn't like school. Soon, she learned English and made friends and was happy in America. We did the Daily 5. We had art class. We painted our spooky landscape. We included details like faces on our pumpkins. We read about what it was like to travel west in a covered wagon.

Bye-bye!

Ria

Tuesday's Tidbit by Ria

Today was a sunny day for a field trip! We went to the Arlington Heights Historical Museum. We saw Mr. F.W. Muller's house. He was an early settler here and he had a soda pop factory in his basement. We went to North Park for lunch. We took our picture by the fountain. We took a tour of the library. We got on the bus and came back to school. We wrote about our field trip. We went to the LMC to start studying a landmark in our town and we had book checkout. Miss O'Sullivan showed us the pictures from our trip. They are now on the blog!

More tomorrow!

Ria

Monday's Message by Ria

Today was Picture Day at school. We had Music and PE class. We played Chicken Tag in gym. There are bunches of chickens. Mr. Gries gives them out to some of the kids. The kids with the chicken try to tag you, and then you get the chicken. In music we learned a new song! It was a cowboy song. We also learned a song about the history of Arlington Heights! It told us all about the past times in our town. We took our spelling pre-test. We also learned some new vocabulary words! They are: settled, wrinkled, practiced, cuddled, favorite and patient. In math we practiced fact families. We are off to get our pictures taken!

CHEESE!

By: Ria

Hello, October!

Greetings!

Fall has arrived! Here are few reminders for you before my recap of the week:

* Picture Day is Monday

* Our field trip to the Arlington Heights Historical Museum and Library is on Tuesday. Please pack your child's lunch in a disposable bag- that will make our travels a bit more manageable. We are so excited to learn about the history of our town!

* Please remember to send in your child's choices for their Arlington Heights Landmark study! We will begin working on these projects on Tuesday afternoon in the LMC. Thank you to those of you who are able to volunteer! We appreciate your help. See you then!

* October book orders are due on Wednesday morning

* There is no school on Friday (SIP day)

* There is no school on Monday 10/10 (Columbus Day)

Spelling

We worked this week on words that have the short and long /i/ sound. Next week we will focus on words with the long and short /o/ sound! Why not search out words with these sounds over the weekend as a preview for the week? Keep a look out in any type of print you encounter, books, street signs, cereal boxes, the newspaper, etc. and make a list!

Reading

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was “Being Yourself.” We kick off every new theme building our background knowledge by talking about the topic. New oral vocabulary words include: remarkable, skill, amusement, entertain, and magnificent. The children grew more comfortable with these words each day. It is so fascinating to watch them begin to incorporate these words into their vocabulary. Our whole group story this week was a photo essay about a little girl named Rosina, who is deaf. We learned that even though she cannot hear, she is just like us in many ways! She learns the same things we do in school, plays the same sports, and enjoys arts and crafts like we do! She can read and is a great helper at home. She just happens to do these things through the use of sign language. Our comprehension strategy continued to focus on summarizing. The children sorted information they read using a web that separated the main idea from the details they pulled from the text. New vocabulary words from this selection included: celebrate, cultures, deaf, language, relatives and signing. All of our reading groups met this week as well! The children are showing much independence with out daily 5 centers. We practiced locating "Tumblebooks" through the blog online, so the children now also have access to the listening center option during this time!

Grammar

The children practiced identifying the predicate in a sentence this week. We found it was really easy to find the predicate after first finding the subject of the sentence! We also learned that commas are placed in sentences to separate cities and states, as w

ell as the date from the year! We “acted” out the punctuation in our sentences by raising our arms for a capital letter, stomping for a period, jumping for an exclamation point, and wiggling for a comma. Ask your child to show you!

Math

The children played a game this week called “Beat the Calculator.” Playing this game, the children realized that even thought the calculator is a pretty quick way to solve math problems, it is no match for the brain when it comes to basic facts. The brain is always faster! We have begun our focused practice of our basic addition math facts. Many of the children are quite comfortable with their doubles facts. We reviewed the concept of a “turn around” fact (in addition, the numbers can be switched back and forth.) The children also quickly picked up on the +9 fact. Our goal is to move away from counting on our fingers or the hundreds chart to solve these basic fact problems!

Social Studies

Our Arlington Heights unit is in progress. We have begun the unit discussing the difference between “needs” and “wants.” The children learned that human beings require food, clothing, and shelter in order to survive. We read a story called “A Packet of Seeds,” about a pioneer family who moved west to acquire more land and build their n

ew home. We imagined what life was like back on the prairie with the nearest neighbor miles away, and without easy access to stores, or even a doctor. The children illustrated the tall prairie grasses, fertile soil, and various plants, animals and insects. We will discuss the early inhabitants next week- beginning with the Potowatomi Indians and moving into the first settlers! We are looking forward to an authentic learning opportunity at the Arlington Heights Historical Museum on our field trip on Tuesday.

Recess Challenge

You might have heard your child mention some out of the ordinary recess activities.. I have been outside with the children during recess this week giving the kids a "challenge" of a few minutes of physical activity. Each recess period is a different challenge. Examples include: laps around the field of skipping, walking, running; hanging from the monkey bars for 30-60 seconds at a time; medicine ball hot potato; dribbling the basketball/soccer ball; or completing an obstacle course on the playground. The children are enjoying these alternatives to recess- and are eager to see what's coming up next! Strangely enough, there are many children who are not in our class that are also choosing to participate! Its fun to see them so excited and eager to do some exercise at recess time!

I hope you are enjoying the weekend!