Weekly Update 11/22

 Thank you to all who came to celebrate and to all who donated items for our Thanksgiving Feast. The students had a great time eating, celebrating, and playing games!

Next week is only 2 days and we hope you have an enjoyable time with family during the long weekend. 

Important Dates:

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 continue our journey in learning our phonograms. We have learned phonograms 1-50. Please focus on these nightly, as they greatly help their reading progress. It is always fun when they start recognizing 2- or 3-letter phonograms in their books. We also learned, so, no, now, man as new sight words. Please continue to encourage your scholars to use the phonograms they know to sound out spelling words. They can write notes or create stories. 

Literature:

We continued reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, where we read the chapter The Slow Eater Tiny Bite Taker Cure where a little boy takes minuscule bites of his meals and then becomes so weak he can hardly stand. He then learns to eat more so he has the energy to do the fun things at Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's house. We also continued with Fables reading The Tortoise and the Hare. The hare learned to not boast so much, and that slow and steady wins the race. we said that throughout the week while completing our different worksheets and projects so that we did our very best work.

Math:

We continued our unit of making and breaking numbers. We have practiced breaking up numbers through ten using the vocabulary "part" and "whole" and slowly have introduced what a number bond looks like and how it works. The students are working to understand that we can break up a number (whole) into two smaller parts. We have practiced this concept using our fingers, pictures, and manipulatives. They have taken an interest in showing different ways to decompose numbers. This concept will serve as a strong foundation as they learn addition and subtraction in the near future. 

History: 

This week, the children enjoyed continuing to learn about the first Thanksgiving. We learned how difficult the first year in the "New World" was for the Pilgrims; without Wampanoag's help, they would not have survived. The children learned about all the trades available during the 17th century, including Farmer, Miller, Spinner, Dressmaker, Tailor, bricklayer, and carpenter, to name a few. The children saw examples of the tools people used back then and how they differ from what we use today. We also learned about the Declaration of Independence and why the American people.

Science:

We continued learning about the needs of living things, and now we are including animals! The students understand that animals are living things, just like plants. We discussed that animals need water, food, and shelter from their environments to survive and how these needs are met based on where they live. We then grouped animals we could find outdoors, thinking about their similarities and differences. While they understand that food is one of the things they need to survive, we started to explore the different types of eaters. They may be herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. We discussed that an herbivore eats plants, a carnivore eats animals, and an omnivore eats both. We made predictions about different animals and which of the three types of eaters they are. We compared our predictions to the facts we read about them.