Weekly Update 11/1

 Important Dates:

11/11: Veteran's Day - No School

11/12: Music Concert at Higley Center for the Performing Arts

11/20: Kindergarten Thanksgiving Celebration: See email for details

11/22: Spirit Wear Day, Treat Friday, Birthday Book Club

11/27-11/29: Thanksgiving Break- No School

12/16-18: Early Release days

12/18: Kindergarten Gingerbread Hunt

12/19-1/3: Winter Break -No School

1/6-1/8: Early Release Days/Parent-Teacher Conferences

Check out what we learned this week

Spalding:

We had fun this week learning many new phonograms. We learned a new phrase to help remember them: "Her first nurse works early." We even learned how to use our fingers to help remember how they are spelled since they sound the same. We added four new spelling words: a, it, is, she. We will continue to review Rule 4 each time we see a vowel at the end of a syllable. 

Literature                                                  

We continued reading Chapter 3 in Mrs. Piggle Wiggle this week, learning about "the answer-backer cure". Mrs. Piggle Wiggle had a creative idea using a bird to help the girl learn to be kind and respectful with her words. We also read the fable Lion and the Mouse, where we saw that even small creatures can do important things and that you should always try to help someone if you can. For weekly poetry we talked about the longer version of Mary Had a Little Lamb.  In grammar, the full-day students worked on understanding how to use pronouns such as she, him, her, he, them, they, etc. We read a story and practiced using the correct pronoun as the teacher read. 

Math

The scholars finished their unit on comparing numbers this week. We have compared groups physically, pictorially, and abstractly (numerals). Of course the students had the most fun with the hands on manipulatives, but they became well versed in understanding the concept when looking to the numbers alone. The Scholars also practiced finding one more or one less than a given number within 10. We practiced using complete sentences with vocabulary such as: "5 is one less than 6" or "One more than 8 is 9". This would be a great area to practice randomly at home. Try asking "What is one more than 5?" and see if they can defend their answer. 

Science

As we continued our Unit on the Needs of Plants and Animals, we went back to our experiment with the food coloring to discover how roots and stems receive water. It was fun to see the colored lines going up the carrots and celery. We also role-played a trip to the Sonoran Desert and Tallgrass Prarie! We boarded our airplane as we learned about the climate of the desert and how plants survive there. We discussed how plants receive the things they need even in such a dry climate like the desert. We then traveled to the Tallgrass Prairie and discussed how the climates in these two environments differ. We noticed the amount of sunlight and rain each domain receives. 

History

This week we continued our unit about different Native American tribes. The children enjoyed learning about the Native groups from the southwest and learned how Rugs are made by the Navajo people, and learned about Totem Poles from the Northwestern tribes.