A summary of our learning!

Below is a series of photos from our week of learning. Its hard to believe how much the children accomplish in a single day! 

 This group of children worked together during an indoor recess to create an amazing structure out of magnetic tiles. It required a lot of teamwork, and they were so proud they asked me to take their picture!

 One of our word study lessons of the week involved listening carefully to the words to decide if they had a LONG vowel or a SHORT vowel. Then, the children played a game of concentration with a buddy. It was a match if the words they selected were a long and short vowel of the same letter. (Ex: long a: "made", short a: "bat") The children had to stop, say the word, and think for each set of cards they drew. THEN they had to remember where each word was! They really enjoyed this challenge!

 Our math lessons led us to regroup the ones AND the tens place by the end of chapter 2.  The children really amazed me with their understanding of regrouping!

 We had a bus evacuation practice earlier in the week. The children learned about bus safety in and near the bus, and they learned what to do in case of an emergency. It is so important to make good choices on the bus so that we can all be as safe as possible!

 In the LMC, the children listened to the story Eddie the Bully.  The children thought of advice for Eddie about how to be kind. These little video clips can be found in my previous blog post. We hope you enjoyed them!

 As we neared the end of Chapter 2 in math, it was time to do a series of reviews to be sure that our learning was clear and strong. The children completed slate reviews, workbook reviews, and then we played a FUN game of Jeopardy!  Each review reminded the children what they learned over the last few weeks and the children showed GREAT success on our chapter assessment. Way to GO, class!!

 Gianluca's mom came in to expand our thinking and understanding about the world of art. She and Mrs. Duda taught us about Japanese wood block printing, as well information about the beautiful Japanese cherry blossoms. The children combined both of these concepts and created drawings of a familiar object but then adorned this object with a stamp of beautiful cherry blossoms. They turned out great! Thank you for your creativity and interesting lesson, art moms!

The children worked together to carefully edit their fairy tales. They used a rubric and "signed off" on each other's checklists showing that they looked for each item in their buddy's work. They looked for a clear beginning, middle, and end. They looked for at least 2 juicy words in each part of the story. (you will see "rainbow" page in several of the pictures below, this is a word list that gives the children additional choices for boring old words such as "said, nice, good, bad, happy..."  They will keep these as a resource in their writing binders. The children are excited to use them to make their writing more exciting!

 An area that the children were also helping each other with was spelling accuracy. We circled words we were unsure of, and the children learned how to use the little microphone in the search bar of the google home page. They pressed the microphone button, asked "Please spell _____" and google brough that word up and SPELLED it for them!  We want to be sure to sharpen our spelling skills by sounding out new words, but this is an accessible tool that can be used to check our work or help us spell words that cannot BE sounded out as easily as others.

 Video announcements! The children LOVED watching the announcements on the screen on Friday morning! It was so much fun to see the faces behind the voices!

 During science, the children carefully observed and classified various liquids. They investigated water, dish soap, honey, and milk for general properties, speed of pouring, transparency, and appearance of the surface.  They did a great job thinking about these liquids critically!

 Ian's older brother came in for his star student celebration on Friday afternoon! Together, they showed us how to make raisins "dance" by putting them in water with baking soda and vinegar. (We saw lots of bubbles!)  Then, Ian's brother read us the story of "Kat Kong."

What a busy busy week! Thanks for dropping by our blog to see what we've been up to!
:)