Another day at school! by Macy M.

We reviewed alliteration this morning. Here is a silly sentence for you: Seventy snowmen swallow snowballs! We took our Unit 3 Treasures test. We are getting better and better at taking these tests! After lunch we listened to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the story, Violet Beauregarde snatched a piece of gum and after eating it, she turned into a giant blueberry! We reviewed our -9 math facts and took a mad minute test. Then we reviewed what friction is! It is when two things rub together, causing them to slow down. We raced some of our shoes down a ramp, to see who's shoes had more friction. Danny's shoe had great friction! It didn't move anywhere! It had grooves in it that seemed to grip the table! Ava D and Ava W.'s Ugg boots had the least friction. They sped down the ramp really fast! We also learned about gravity today. Gravity is an invisible pull toward the middle of the earth. We watched videos of astronauts in outerspace who had no gravity. They floated everywhere. We drew pictures of our classroom as if there was no gravity!

Have an awesome weekend!

Sincerely,

Macy M.

Everything about today at school by Macy M.

Today was a good day at school! We practiced our spelling words, read with a buddy, and reviewed suffixes at the ends of words. We reviewed writing a friendly letter. Our class had art today, too. We painted a picture of ourselves with a friend. It will take a long time to paint, but we are halfway done. We learned the cursive w! In math we practiced sorting a set of counters into smaller groups. Sometimes there were counters left over, because our groups all had the same number of counters in each one. We completed our math boxes to practice our skills!

More later!

Macy

Our good day at school! By Macy M.

This morning we reviewed the idea of "cause and effect" by reading a short story and answering some questions using the text. We are getting ready for our Unit 3 test in Treasures this week! We went to the library this afternoon. We sent Mrs. Jojo an email message, and then we sent our parents an email message, too! Unfortunately, our email only works with district email addresses, so our messages wouldn't go through. Miss O'Sullivan sent them for us! We learned a new math trick today! Its -9. The trick is to just add the top two numbers together (when subtracting numbers that are less than 20). Its a trick that will help us remember those facts quickly! We also learned a new cursive letter. It was the letter u. In science we talked about friction. We experimented to see how a penny moves over different surfaces! We tried wax paper, carpet, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, and news print. It traveled the farthest over the newsprint because it had the least amount of friction. It traveled the shortest distance over the sand paper because it had the most friction or rubbing between the two surfaces. We read another chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The kids get so excited to hear the story!

PS Only do the top half of your cursive homework tonight!

See you tomorrow!

Macy M.

A fun day at school by: Steven

It was a snowy day at school! It was nice to watch the snow fall outside our classroom window all day long. This morning we took our spelling test, DOL quiz, and out grammar quiz. We practiced combining sentences that have the same subject. Then we wrote a friendly letter to a little girl who lives in Japan. Her name is Mana and she was in Miss O'Sullivan's class in 2nd grade. She wants to practice her English so we sent her letters to read! We are also going to send her some books to read because reading is so fun! We can't wait until she gets them! After lunch we read some more of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the story they are now in Willy Wonka's factory. You'll never believe this. Augustus Gloop has fallen into the chocolate river, and then he got sucked up the pipe. I wonder what will happen to him! In science we practiced rolling marbles along a track. They were made of glass, metal, and cork. They were big and they were small. We were trying to see how far the balls would roll after they collided with each other. The big metal ball caused the biggest collision, and the cork ball caused the smallest collision because it was the lightest.

Macy M. was our star this week! Her little brother Zach, her mom, and her dad all came to our class today! She did a cool experiment. We checked to see which liquid a magnet move a paper clip through the fastest between corn syrup, vegetable oil, and water. The fastest was the water. Then came the vegetable oil. The thickest liquid was the corn syrup. The paper clips moved really slow in that one! Macy is a star because she is nice and playful and a hard worker!

Have a fun, snowy, long weekend!

Steven

We are one busy class! By Steven

We marched right into the computer lab this morning and we sat at our computers! We found out that we have our very own email accounts to use here at school! Ms. Breaux set them up for us and she even sent us an email message! We practiced logging in to our accounts and typing her a message back. The messages went to everyone in our class, so now we have each other's email addresses, too! It was so much fun sending messages to each other. Its a good way to practice our typing, too. Then we went to PE class. It was our last day of gymnastics. My favorite station was the one where you run with the football and then jump over the rope while you are holding on to it! In music class we played a game where we tapped each other on the shoulder and we had to guess who did it! We had our first cursive lesson today! We learned two letters, the i and the t. They are a lot alike. We made a pinky promise with Miss O'Sullivan that we won't go ahead of the class! That way we won't confused. The rules of cursive are: 1) sit tall in your chair 2) both feet on the floor 3) slant your paper 4) use your guide hand. It went awesome! In science we talked about pushing and pulling, and we practiced using different amounts of force. A little force makes a little movement and a larger forces makes a bigger movement.

I almost forgot! Yesterday was a fun day at school too! We learned how to send an email. We made sure to include a subject that told what the message was about. We emailed Ms. Breaux and Mrs. Kenney. Then we emailed all the parents in our class to find out what their favorite food was. We got 24 responses during the school day! It was so much fun to read all of our messages. Guess which food group was the most popular? It was fruit and vegetables! 14 parents liked it the most! What a fun day.

Bye Bye!

:) Steven

Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King! by Steven

Yesterday was our first day back after the Martin Luther King weekend! We went to the LMC. Mrs. Dufern read us a book about Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a biography about his life. He was a man who fought for civil rights for African Americans. Up in the computer lab we explored websites that had to do with motion! During math we practiced "Quantity, Quantity, Difference" problems. We were comparing the different sizes of fish! We also made a graph of the kids' favorite foods in our class. Guess what the most popular food group was? It was the fruits and vegetables group! We also read a fun story in our Treasures book yesterday, called "Click, Clack, Moo; Cows that Type!" It was about some crazy cows that were typing letters to the farmer asking him for electric blankets. We practiced finding the cause and effect after reading the story!

Friday's Blog! by Lily

We wrote Miss O'Sullivan a persuasive letter this morning that told her why we think we should or shouldn't have recess this morning. We thought of a bunch of good reasons, and made sure to use our persuasive words from yesterday! We had outdoor recess in the snow! It went great, we had a really good time! The boys like to make the biggest snow fort ever! We started learning our subtraction facts in math! So far we learned -0, -1, -2, and -doubles. I feel like I'm starting to get speedy already! We took our 'printing' handwriting test to see if we are ready to learn to write in cursive. I think my handwriting turned out really awesome! In science we did time trials to see how fast we could walk backwards, jump, and crawl. We found out that we went fastest when we were jumping because we were moving forward and in a straight direction. After that we were experimenting to see how we could make a toy car move. My group made a ramp with books and a ruler and a plastic tube and then we pushed it down.

We read a story this morning called "The Worry Warts." It was about some silly worrywarts that enjoyed watermelon, worms, and wandering on walks in the wild. Did you know that alliteration is when the same sound repeats again and again? Wow! :)

Macy Goodman was our star student this week! Her mom and her dad came to visit our class. She did an experiment using water, some glass jars, and some objects. The glass with the round edges made the object bigger- just like a magnifying glass! Macy is a star because she is very fluent, she moves quickly during class, and she is such a nice girl!

Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Lily

Something BIG happened! by Lily

We had PE and Music yesterday! We had gymnastics. We climbed a rope and did some somersaults and cartwheels. In music we finished coloring the map of the Ohio River. We colored the river and the states that surround it. We did that because we sang a song about it!

We are reading a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And guess what happened! Charlie found the 5th golden ticket!! We didn't think he would ever find it! Now he gets to go to Mr. Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory! He will get chocolate for a lifetime. I am really happy he got it because he is poor and he doesn't have much. He is a really nice kid. I would give him food if he was real.

During math we learned about solving subtraction story problems using a "Quantity, Quantity, Difference" box. That box made those problems easier to solve. It is kind of like using a fact triangle!

More Later!

From, Lily

Wednesday's Blog by Lily

Yesterday we had art class! We painted our pictures! It was awesome! Mine is a picture of me and an alien. My alien has a purple face and bunny ears. It also has long squiggly hair. I'm not really like that at all. My hair is short. We also took our math MAP test yesterday. I think I beat my score! There were all kinds of questions. We learned about writing a postcard yesterday. Our job was to write a postcard to a friend or family member trying to convince them why they should come to Arlington Heights. We used persuasive words like " Obviously, " "Surely," "Local people feel that," and "Just think about..." We were very convincing! Arlington Heights is great!

Busy as usual!

Sincerely,

:) Lily

Tuesday's Blog by Lily

Yesterday was a busy day at school! It was so busy that I am doing the blog this morning! We took a test on the computers in the LMC. It was a reading test. There were easy, hard, and perfect questions on it. I think I did really good. We read a new story in our Treasures book. It was about a school of dancers in New York City. It was nonfiction. The boys did a dance called capoeira, they dance in a circle without their shoes. The girls did tap and ballet! After we read the story we visited the Alvin Ailey School's website and watched them dance in a video online! During math, we practiced adding multiple numbers, making sure to add the numbers that "make a ten," first!

More later!

Lily

Our Day! by Lily

Hello! We went to PE class today. We did gymnastics. My favorite part was climbing the rope! It was really hard. My hands just reached the red line and then I fell to the ground. We wrote Mr. Gries a friendly letter today! We started with the heading, and then we wrote the greeting, the body, the closing and then our signature. We wrote what a great teacher he is! We started a new class read aloud, its "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." It is so good I can practically taste the chocolate in the story in my mouth! In math we reviewed and then took our test! We will start Unit 6 tomorrow. We also watched a little video on motion! We learned how different things move, for example pushing and pulling, and we heard about friction!

What a great day! Make sure to check in again tomorrow, I'm here all week!

:) Lily

Friday's Fun by Margaret

Today was an awesome day. We had our grammar test, DOL test, and spelling test. We did word work before we took our spelling test. We practiced writing a thank you note! In a thank you note, its important to say what you are thanking your friend for, tell how you will use it, and include a nice comment. Don't forget your closing and your signature! Then we wrote our own thank you notes! We read a Time for Kids newspaper about the Arctic animals. We learned that the tusk of the walrus can grow up to 3 feet long! In science we finished motion observations. We went to the gym and saw all kinds of movement! It was Amaya's star student day! Her mom came in and they made a cool kaleidoscope! The light bounced and reflected off of the shiny mirrors! She read a story about a silly little goat that refused to eat garbage.

Have a great dolphin weekend!

Margaret

Thursday's Thoughts by Margaret

Today was another great day! We had PE and Music this morning! In PE we had gymnastics. There were balance beams, a rope you could climb, the high jump, and tumbling. My favorite was the tumbling! In music we learned a new song. It was called Jimalong Josie. We did the Daily 5 this morning too! We practiced our word work and did some reading too. We wrote Mrs. Lane a friendly letter about how she is a great secretary for our school. We included all of the important parts of the letter. In math we studied symmetry! Symmetry means the same on both sides. We made symmetrical snowflakes, too! We hope it will snow now! We talked about different types of motion. We noticed that the weight of the object might affect its speed!

Have a great afternoon!

Margaret

Wednesday's Wisdom by Margaret

Today was a great day! We started off the day writing star letters to Owen S. We made sure to start with a heading, then we wrote the greeting, the body, the closing, and the signature. We learned about the Super Croc in our Treasures books! It was a HUGE crocodile that lived 110 million years ago, back when dinosaurs lived. In art class we finished our pictures and next time we are going to paint them. In math people brought 3 dimensional shapes from home and we talked about each one. We played with magnets and made pyramids and prisms out of them. On each shape we counted the faces, bases, edges and vertices. We also found the apex on each of the pyramids we made.

Have a great night!

Margaret

Tuesday's Tidbit by Margaret

Today was a busy day! We learned about past tense verbs. They will usually end in "ed." We learned about our new science unit! Its all about Motion. We went to the front hallway and looked outside for examples of motion. We saw cars moving, people walking and doors opening. We wrote about and drew what we saw. In the LMC, we wrote about our New Year's Resolutions. My resolution is to practice swimming! In writing, we are now working on writing letters. We read a book called "I Wanna Iguana." It was a book full of letters from a little boy named Alex to his mom. He was trying to convince her to get him an iguana. All letters should have the date, a greeting, a body (purpose), a closing, and a signature.

Happy New Year!

Margaret