Friday, May 8, 2015
Changes in Nature Update
We went for our little nature walk around the school this afternoon to look for new signs of spring and to see how nature has changed over the past week. There were some pretty big changes! The warm weather must really be making a big difference! It certainly is exciting!
Class Pets
The students finished a unit on persuasive writing right before vacation. They wrote me letters trying to convince me which class pet we should get. They all wrote very convincing letters but I ended up choosing turtles because they are so quiet, easy to take care of, and they aren't dangerous! The two box turtles arrived this week. Their names are Dorito and Mia. They will be a great addition to our classroom as we learn about nature, reptiles, and animals that live near a pond. We are hoping to see some turtles on our nature hike at the end of the month too!
More Spring Artwork
We have been busy decorating our classroom walls with more spring artwork. The students made giant flowers similar to the giant flower in Eric Carle's "The Tiny Seed" book. They also painted forsythia bushes to illustrate our forsythia poem. We decorated our classroom door with recycled materials too to help celebrate Earth Day. Spring is definitely in the air in Room 115!
Magnet Show
Mr. Musselman from the Burlington Science Center presented a Magnet Show this week and taught us some pretty cool facts about magnets! It was a nice follow-up to the quick magnet unit we did before vacation. We have also been using magnets to "fish" for our sight words this week!
Friday, May 1, 2015
Changes in Nature
We have been taking pictures of different locations around our school to keep track of how nature is changing around us! There have been some pretty big changes already! We are excited to see even more over the next few weeks!
May 1, 2015 Newsletter
Dear Parents,
I hope you all had a wonderful vacation! I loved hearing all the stories that your children came back with! They were all excited to share what special times you had last week.
We have had a busy week in Room 115! We have started learning all about seeds, trees, and plants. We will start learning about insects next week. The students made trees and labeled each of the parts at the art table. They wrote in their journals about their vacations, what trees give us, and about seeds. Their writing is coming along nicely. We have been practicing putting spaces between our words, periods at the end of the sentences, and uppercase letters at the beginning of sentences. We will be starting our last writing unit on narrative writing and they will be writing stories about themselves and some things they have done!
In math we started a new unit on the position and location of objects. The concepts have been more of a review for the students so we have been trying to come up with some fun and creative ways to practice them. I will be getting ready to assess the students’ addition and subtraction fluency facts in a couple of weeks as well as their sight words. I would encourage you to continue working on these daily.
We planted sunflower seeds this week. We will watch them grow and then send home the plants after they have grown a little so you can plant them somewhere at your home. We have also started taking pictures of a few different plants/trees around our school and have been discussing the changes in nature we have been observing. I would encourage you to do something similar at home if you are able to. I would love for students to bring in their pictures or drawings in a few weeks to show us the changes in nature they observed at their homes!
Enjoy your weekend!
Melanie Duncan
PS… Our next field trip will be on Friday, May 29th. We are going on a nature hike in the Middlesex Fells Nature Reservation. More information will go home next week. If you are interested in chaperoning, please let me know. I can take as many as are interested!
I hope you all had a wonderful vacation! I loved hearing all the stories that your children came back with! They were all excited to share what special times you had last week.
We have had a busy week in Room 115! We have started learning all about seeds, trees, and plants. We will start learning about insects next week. The students made trees and labeled each of the parts at the art table. They wrote in their journals about their vacations, what trees give us, and about seeds. Their writing is coming along nicely. We have been practicing putting spaces between our words, periods at the end of the sentences, and uppercase letters at the beginning of sentences. We will be starting our last writing unit on narrative writing and they will be writing stories about themselves and some things they have done!
In math we started a new unit on the position and location of objects. The concepts have been more of a review for the students so we have been trying to come up with some fun and creative ways to practice them. I will be getting ready to assess the students’ addition and subtraction fluency facts in a couple of weeks as well as their sight words. I would encourage you to continue working on these daily.
We planted sunflower seeds this week. We will watch them grow and then send home the plants after they have grown a little so you can plant them somewhere at your home. We have also started taking pictures of a few different plants/trees around our school and have been discussing the changes in nature we have been observing. I would encourage you to do something similar at home if you are able to. I would love for students to bring in their pictures or drawings in a few weeks to show us the changes in nature they observed at their homes!
Enjoy your weekend!
Melanie Duncan
PS… Our next field trip will be on Friday, May 29th. We are going on a nature hike in the Middlesex Fells Nature Reservation. More information will go home next week. If you are interested in chaperoning, please let me know. I can take as many as are interested!
Labeled Tree Diagrams
We have started our unit on nature. We have talked a lot about trees and plant parts. This week the students made and labeled trees to decorate the hall! We will be filling our classroom walls up very soon with more spring artwork. Stay tuned!
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