Weekly Update 11/8

  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

12/14-15: Early Release days

12/15: Kindergarten Gingerbread Hunt

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

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

Check out what we learned this week

Spalding

With our busy week, we still had many things to learn. We have learned phonograms 1- 47 so far. We continued working with our /er/ family phonograms using "Her first nurse works early" and practicing our hand movements and cues. This week's new sight words were can, see, run, and the. Keep reviewing the cards at home. Choose 10-15 each night so that the scholars can be confident in using them to begin writing words on their own. 

Literature

This week, we continued to read Chapter 4 of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle helped solve a case of selfishness with her crazy, wacky ways. We continued talking about Fables and how they have lessons or morals for us to learn. We heard the story The Grasshopper and the Ant, where the grasshopper only wanted to play while the ants stored food and prepared for winter. When winter came, the grasshopper was cold and hungry while the ants were ready. We also talked about how it compared to the story of The Little Red Hen. We talked about how it is important to do homework and chores before playing or doing fun things. We also discussed Veteran's Day by reading a story and learning why we celebrate this holiday. In poetry, we heard the poem Diddle, Diddle Dumpling, a silly poem. We also spent time in grammar, talking about phone numbers, and learning that 911 is an emergency number. We sent home a paper for you to help your scholar practice remembering important phone numbers. 

Math

This week the students started to explore how to make and break numbers. We used a lot of hands on manipulatives to understand that a number can be decomposed of two other numbers. We practiced finding the parts to the whole in a group. We would then practice the sentences 2 and 3 make 5 or 5 is 2 and 3. We challenged their minds and asked for them to think further and identify more than one way to break apart a number. This is a crucial foundation for the scholars' number sense and we will spend a lot of time honing in this skill.

History

The children have so enjoyed learning about the First Thanksgiving. We have learned about the differences between the life of a pilgrim and the lives we live today. The children were so interested in seeing a typical bedroom of a pilgrim family and how it differs from their own. One significant difference they noticed was no toys in the bedrooms. Pilgrim children usually played simple games like marbles or 'churning butter,' where they spun around until they fell. While the names have changed over the generations, some of the games we play are similar to that of the pilgrim. 

Science

We only had one day for science this week, so we checked on our growing plants and discussed a plant's life cycle. It was interesting to see that both seeds which were given water grew, but the seed in the darkness grew taller and stayed a whitish yellow, while the seed in the sunshine grew leaves and turned a dark green. We also took time to dissect and investigate a lima bean seed, learning about the seed coat, the seed embryo, and how it will become the new seedling.