Week 3

August 18-22

What sets our kids apart? At recess, many students have enjoyed looking for monarch eggs and caterpillars.  We definitely have some nature-smart kids!  We have 4 chrysalis in our room and we are expecting the butterflies to arrive next Friday!! These kids not only enjoy the insects, but spend a lot of their recess time pulling weeds (to improve the garden habitat), watering plants (using collected rain water wherever possible) and harvesting the garden's veggies and fruits and even caring for the CPCS chickens.  Let us know if you'd like some fresh eggs!  Our new students are often stunned at our recess options!!

Shout out to our S.L.O.P Cops for their great update at Community Gathering today.  So far we've "recycled" 62 pounds of food waste to our local chicken farm.  Our Conservationists have been successful with their recycling efforts too!  So far, they've gathered 36 pounds of plastic film for the TREX company to recycle into decking materials and fed 8 pounds of compostable material to our worms for rich fertilizer for our gardens.  Please keep sending in any plastic bags, overwrapping, clean ziplock bags, bread bags, etc.!

Math:

Every Monday students try to beat their fact record during Math Madness for Multiplication.  Nearly all the students improved their baseline scores from our first quiz.  Be sure to ask what your child to tell you their record or score they are trying to beat this week.

In between pre-assessments, students learned the math game "Changing Places to 1,000" and played it throughout the week, helping them with mental math and reviewing place value.  Next week, we will play on a 10,000 chart that spans the length of our entire hallway!  

Science:

We continued to explore inherited vs. learned traits.  Students solved the mystery of Junior the horse by investigating his family tree.  Ask your child what clues they used to discovered where Junior inherited his blue eyes.  We also started our project-based assessment for the unit.  Students are creating the perfect pet while writing a persuasive advertisement (describing its learned and inherited traits) in the hopes that they will get adopted.  Watch our bulletin board for the final ads!  So far we have an elephant, panda, several cats and dogs that are up for adoption!!

Language Arts:

We’ve had 3 “words of the week” so far: collaborate, inquisitive, and heritage.  Most recently we’ve talked about the different aspects of “heritage”.  This week we looked specifically what people consider “home” or “homeland”.  The students brainstormed nouns, adjectives, and verbs that they associate with the word “home”.  We read one selection related to “home” and will read about a very different home next week. 

       In social studies we’ve been reviewing the geography of the world.  The students have identified the continents and major oceans on a paper map.  We also made a human map outside with students representing the continents, oceans, poles and the equator.  

            Please encourage your child to:

-          Read and fill out their reading log

-          Work on their ancestor project