Hello everyone!
First off, thank you so much for all the coins you helped your children collect these past couple of weeks! As you will read below in the math section, we have been busy counting, and there are so many coins in our “Save the Rainforest” jar that we still aren’t done! We will report our donation total next week, along with how many yards of rainforest we will be able to protect as a result. :)
Secondly, please be sure to send a water bottle to school with your child each day! This is always important, but as the temperature grows warmer over the next month, we want to be extra sure our munchkins stay hydrated… without having to spend too much class time in repeated visits to the water fountain. Thank you for your help on this!
Literacy:
We had several important lessons this week, learning all about mean old Bossy R. That letter R is SO bossy that whenever she can’t be first and has to come after a vowel, she makes that vowel change how it usually sounds…. Ask your child the sounds of /ar/ /er/ and /or/! Our most recent sight words “her” and “or” were picked to help us remember how Bossy R works, and we will have more Bossy R sight words headed our way next week too.
This week we also did a special review of the blend “dr,” since quite a few of the students are still hearing /jr/ and spelling it that way in their writing as a result. We practiced saying “dr” with a nice hard “d,” as in words like drum, dragon, dress, and so on, and sorted picture cards with various items beginning with “j” and “dr” to help clarify the difference between the two sounds.
This week we finished off one of the Magic Treehouse chapter books, Midnight on the Moon. We had a lot of fun imagining the adventures two children would have on the moon! Ask your child what an “airlock” is, and why it would be an important thing to have on a space station.
Math:
Counting money was the aim of the game this week and what fun was had doing it!
First we continued to count combinations of coins remembering to write the cents symbol when we record how many coins we have altogether. Then we decided to count the money in our Save the Rainforest jar, and boy are we doing great!
We started by counting out the dollars, introducing a dollar bill and a five dollar bill. We then split into groups and sorted the coins into piles of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, making it easier for us to count all the coins! We have so many coins we have to count them over a few days!! Thank you so much for being so generous and providing us with a fantastic experiential activity.
We also introduced the concept that we can use two digits to make different numbers, as long as the digits are not the same. First we rolled two dice with digits on them and then we made the numbers, for example we rolled a 4 and a 5 and then put them together to make 45 and 54! Every time we made the numbers we checked to see which was the biggest and which was the smallest.
Our Math Stations this week included:
In other news:
This week was our last monthly EL Assembly of the year! It was a particularly fun one, with a musical sing-along as the 3-year-olds showed us how to dance around a May Pole!
Big thanks to our Mystery Readers this week, Brody’s grandma and Finley’s dad Mike! Big thanks as well to our Academic Helper, Anna’s mom Hilary, who helped the kids play a fun reading / spelling game.
Have a great long weekend!
First off, thank you so much for all the coins you helped your children collect these past couple of weeks! As you will read below in the math section, we have been busy counting, and there are so many coins in our “Save the Rainforest” jar that we still aren’t done! We will report our donation total next week, along with how many yards of rainforest we will be able to protect as a result. :)
Secondly, please be sure to send a water bottle to school with your child each day! This is always important, but as the temperature grows warmer over the next month, we want to be extra sure our munchkins stay hydrated… without having to spend too much class time in repeated visits to the water fountain. Thank you for your help on this!
Literacy:
We had several important lessons this week, learning all about mean old Bossy R. That letter R is SO bossy that whenever she can’t be first and has to come after a vowel, she makes that vowel change how it usually sounds…. Ask your child the sounds of /ar/ /er/ and /or/! Our most recent sight words “her” and “or” were picked to help us remember how Bossy R works, and we will have more Bossy R sight words headed our way next week too.
This week we also did a special review of the blend “dr,” since quite a few of the students are still hearing /jr/ and spelling it that way in their writing as a result. We practiced saying “dr” with a nice hard “d,” as in words like drum, dragon, dress, and so on, and sorted picture cards with various items beginning with “j” and “dr” to help clarify the difference between the two sounds.
This week we finished off one of the Magic Treehouse chapter books, Midnight on the Moon. We had a lot of fun imagining the adventures two children would have on the moon! Ask your child what an “airlock” is, and why it would be an important thing to have on a space station.
Math:
Counting money was the aim of the game this week and what fun was had doing it!
First we continued to count combinations of coins remembering to write the cents symbol when we record how many coins we have altogether. Then we decided to count the money in our Save the Rainforest jar, and boy are we doing great!
We started by counting out the dollars, introducing a dollar bill and a five dollar bill. We then split into groups and sorted the coins into piles of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, making it easier for us to count all the coins! We have so many coins we have to count them over a few days!! Thank you so much for being so generous and providing us with a fantastic experiential activity.
We also introduced the concept that we can use two digits to make different numbers, as long as the digits are not the same. First we rolled two dice with digits on them and then we made the numbers, for example we rolled a 4 and a 5 and then put them together to make 45 and 54! Every time we made the numbers we checked to see which was the biggest and which was the smallest.
Our Math Stations this week included:
- Playing Hi Low with Mrs K. - where everyone picks a card and guesses if the next person’s card will be a lower number or higher number. If they guess correct they get to keep the cards! The one with the most cards wins!
- Place Value Bingo - where the children have bingo mats with pictures of 10 rods and one cubes and match them to the cards with digits they pick up
- Ocean Number Bonds - where the children have ocean themed pieces of paper with dots and have to put them together to make ten in different ways
- Ordering Numbers - where the children have trees with numbers on them and have to find the number that comes before and after it, putting them in order
- Number line addition/subtraction - where the children have a large number line and move forwards and backwards in response to addition and subtraction number sentences (written by their friends) in order to solve the sum!
- Clock Bingo- where the children play clock bingo with mats and cards that revise time to the hour and half hour
- Money Write the Room - where the children find cards with pictures of coins on around the room and write down the amount they found.
- Computers - the children were allowed to choose a math game for themselves from the website abcya.com
In other news:
This week was our last monthly EL Assembly of the year! It was a particularly fun one, with a musical sing-along as the 3-year-olds showed us how to dance around a May Pole!
Big thanks to our Mystery Readers this week, Brody’s grandma and Finley’s dad Mike! Big thanks as well to our Academic Helper, Anna’s mom Hilary, who helped the kids play a fun reading / spelling game.
Have a great long weekend!