Our Week in Review

From the desk of Mrs. Schmidt...

We had a fun and productive third week!  Our routines are becoming more established and there is a lot of learning going on in 2-2!

This week we brought our Landform unit to a close in Social Studies.  To introduce our Motion unit in Science, we became detectives in search of examples of motion on the playground.  The students used their keen observation skills to notice things in motion.  Our discussions involved looking carefully at how an object moves in terms of speed and direction.  Our observations were recorded in our Motion journals.  This was a great start to our Motion unit!

In Math, we are exploring counting patterns on a number grid, equivalent names for numbers, and counting money.  The students challenged themselves to solve number grid puzzles and even made up some of their own!  We will continue to find new ways to name numbers.  

We read an amusing story, "Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour Tea."  Be sure to ask your child who Tabby was in the story!  An emphasis was made on understanding story structure of the beginning, middle and end of a story.  This will be an important skill all year to help us understand how a story is organized.  Story maps will be used in our own writing as well to help us generate ideas and make sure that our stories make sense.

Speaking of writing, we started our own autobiography.  In these, we will share own our life stories from birth until now.  We are all looking forward to hearing about what has shaped our lives so far and makes us so SPECIAL!  

Upcoming Events

1) Library on Monday-please be sure that your child has their books if they want to check out new ones.

2) MAP Testing:  Reading on Wednesday, 9/17, in the morning

                        Math on Thursday, 9/18, in the afternoon

3) Please make sure that your child gets a good night's sleep and eats a healthy breakfast!  Thanks!

 The students are hard at work practicing their math facts on the computer!

They are using a website called Xtramath.org. 

Please encourage your child to log in and practice at home, too!

The site will track your child's progress and move them along to practicing their subtraction 

and even multiplication facts when they show they are developmentally ready!

The class headed outdoors for some authentic learning during science! 

They kept their eyes and ears peeled for examples of motion and recorded 

them in their science journals.

 One of our Daily 5 centers is "Read with a Buddy." Here the children are practicing reading elbow to elbow, knee to knee- close enough so they can both easily share and process the text together. They are practicing their reading skills re-reading the whole group story of the week about Mr. Putter and his friendly old cat named Tabby. The children are building their sight word vocabularies, strengthening their reading fluency, and learning how to support a friend while reading!