Important upcoming dates:
Check out what we learned this week:
Thank you for helping us celebrate our first Great Hearts day, where we discussed friendship. We enjoyed reading stories and making a friend a friendship bracelet for someone in our class. We continue to remember the golden rule: treat others how you want to be treated.
Spalding
We have learned all 70 phonograms and will spend the remainder of the year reviewing and practicing them. Continue to support our practice by having your scholar tell you the sounds from the cards by giving them the sounds and having them practice recalling the letters on the paper. These essential skills help them develop their reading and spelling independence for 1st grade!
Literature
We continued reading in our chapter book Mr. Popper's Penguins. The family began designing a Penguin show by adding music to the penguins daily activities such as play fighting, marching and tobogganing, in hopes of having them perform on stage. Our Fairy Tale unit continues by taking us across the ocean to a German story called The Bremen Town Musicians, where a group of animals team up to go on a journey. We talked about teamwork and making new friends. For Grammar, we spent the week reviewing our story, The Lion and the Mouse. We spoke of the First, Next, and Last of the story's most important events.
Math
Our math lessons included more addition strategies this week. The students continued to use the manipulatives and ten frames and number lines to solve the equations. We know that many students have memorized some facts, which is excellent! However, we would like to focus on the ability to use multiple ways to find the answer instead of "being correct." Please help us in this endeavor by asking your students to show you more than one way to solve an addition problem. So far, we have practiced using manipulatives (blocks/counters), ten frames, drawing pictures, and number lines. There will be plenty of time to memorize facts, but we are focused on the "how," not the answer.
History
This week, we continued our exploration of America by learning all about President's Day. We learned about the two most famous Presidents who inspired this holiday, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It started as a regular holiday on February 22nd until 1968 when it was mandated that all Federal holidays occur on Mondays. Yay for the introduction of the three-day weekend! We also learned about the positive influence of Theodore Roosevelt. We owe all our beautiful National Parks to him.
Science
In our Pushes and Pulls unit, we started learning about other invisible forces that can make objects move, aside from physically pushing or pulling them, such as gravity and magnetism. We discussed how all life activities are affected by gravity, such as people coming back down to the ground after the jump. We noted how various objects move and which fall faster, such as a bouncy ball and a feather. We discussed outer space and what astronauts experience when there is no gravity. We also learned about a scientist named Sir Isaac Newton.