News for April 8

News for April 8

This week the class continued to prepare for our big party next week. The students learned how to fold a little book out of paper and used these to create invitations to our 100 Books Party. These were made for the families of each student and for the other classes and staff invited to our celebration. The children started to make bookmarks to give to each of our guests as a thank you for coming to our celebration. Each bookmark has a sentence written on it, reminding everyone to read and a candy on the back to remind them that reading is "sweet". The class made 125 by Friday and we need 125 more...

In math, the students began to study the multiplication times tables from 0 to 10. We focused first on the "easy" ones to remember. When a numbers is multiplied by "0" the product is always zero. When a number is multiplied by "1" the answer is the original number. When a number is multiplied by "2", it's also an addition double fact or skip counting by 2's. When a number is multiplied by "5", it's skip counting by 5's. When a number is multiplied by "10", it's skip counting by ten's. The other multiplication facts are trickier. The students learned the communicative law of multiplication. That means that the order of the numbers in a multiplication sentence does not matter, the product will always be the same. For example, 6x8=48 OR 8x6=48. The students also did a daily 3-minute practice of two- and three-digit addition using the Touch Math strategy. Over half the class can now do 10 questions in less than three minutes!

The students finished their book reports and sock monkey books in order to be ready for the display at our party.

The children began a new writing challenge. We reread the Oliver Jeffers book, "Lost and Found" and we realized that the penguin character never speaks. So the challenge is to write a story from the point of view of the penguin. The students also learned how to fold an origami penguin to help them understand how to "be" the penguin when they write their stories and give the penguin a "voice".

In science, the students wrote down their observations of the changes happening with their bean seeds. Most beans almost doubled in size and grew long, white roots. Some even began to change green. Each child took two of their germinated beans and planted them in soil to see how they would grow in soil. We discussed how the sun is important to every living thing in our world and how almost everything on earth has a connection to the sun. The children read a non-fiction article about seeds and how they are designed in different ways to move away from the parent plant so they don't compete for water/air/soil/sun. Did you know that a coconut is actually a seed and can float?

In art, the children learned more about the artist Pablo Picasso. We looked at photos of his work with recycled materials and his drawings of faces. The students used both these ideas to creat faces using materials around the classroom.

*Click on the image to see the whole photo.

Books read aloud this week:

OOOH! Picasso by Mil Neipold and Jeanyves Verdu

The Boy Who Bit Picasso by Antony Penrose (This was our 100th book!)

Picasso and the Girl With the Ponytail by Laurence Anholt

Plant a Seed by Janet Brick

My Light - The Story of the Sun and our World by Molly Bang

Pippi Longstocking (chapter book) by Astrid Lindgren