Week of September 18th

The Monkeys worked hard last week and had fun doing it!  We are going to continue developing number sense up to 10 this week.  Today we looked at a number line with numbers 1-10.  We discussed what numbers come before or after a particular number.  We will continue our work on this concept this week.
In language arts, we will be learning about story elements.  Today, we discussed what a character is in a story after reading the book Brave Irene by William Steig.  The Monkeys drew and colored a picture of their favorite character from the book.  We will also learn about "setting" this week.  
In writing, many students finished their first published story today.  We will continue working on creating stories just as authors do.  
In science, we finished our unit on properties of objects.  We had fun exploring properties of objects with our senses last week.  We recorded our results like scientists.

This week in science we began our new unit on changes caused by heating or cooling.  We were able to explore freezing and melting today.  We froze popsicles and ate them and observed them melt.  We determined that our bodies have a lot of heat.  We also tried to melt blocks of ice to get dimes out of them that were frozen inside.  We put one out in the sun, held another with our hands (body heat), left one on a table and used a hair dryer on another. 

Last week, the Monkeys were excited to learn all about our superstar student, Juliette!  We were able to hear all about her life and interests!

This week, our class is happy to be learning about our new superstar student, Swara!