Week of March 20th

The Monkey class had a busy week the week after spring break!  I was very happy to see my Monkeys since I missed the Thursday-Friday before spring break.  During science, we learned about plant parts and their uses.  We observed plants on Monday and recorded our observations in our science notebooks.

In math, we began to really focus more on subtraction.  We are learning terms such as minus, take away, separate, how many are left, etc.  We will continue to focus on this concept.  As numbers increase, subtraction can be more challenging than addition.  In language arts we focused on compound words for part of the week.  We also focused on how to respond to fiction or nonfiction in our reading response journals.  We wrote how-to pages during writing, such as how to brush our teeth.  We also wrote a story about our spring break.

The students had the pleasure of meeting our French teacher last week and took part in their first French lesson.

The class was very excited to begin our PBL (project based learning) project last week!  We planted our jalapenos and some cilantro seeds.  We are taking care of their needs each day at school and can't wait for the upcoming growth and harvest!  We will be making some homemade salsa on Cinco de Mayo!

The Monkeys enjoyed learning all about our Superstar student, Eve, before spring break!  We learned all about her life and interests.

The Monkeys were happy to start learning about our new Superstar student, Kaden, this morning!

Week of Feb. 27th

The Monkeys had a wonderful, busy and fun-filled week!  We celebrated Read Across America/Dr. Seuss' birthday and went on a field trip!  We also learned a lot!

In science, we continued to learn about the needs of living things.  We focused on what plants need to survive and what animals need to survive.  We hope you all enjoyed our pic collages we shared with you on Seesaw.  Next week in science we will focus on natural resources.  In language arts, we read expository text about famous African-Americans that have contributed to our nation.  Ask your child about Jackie Robinson and Bessie Coleman.  We also wrote stories and will finish and publish them on Monday.  Next week, we will focus more on the elements of expository text.  We will also learn to write "how-to" procedural text in writing.  During math, we have focused on one more and one less than specific numbers.  Next week, we will begin to focus on subtraction and review addition.

Our class was very excited to learn about our Superstar student, Ethan W., this past week.  We learned all about his life and interests!

We are looking forward to learning all about our next Superstar student, Eve, next week!

Our class had the pleasure of listening to our assistant principal, Mrs. Freide, read us a story on Read Across America Day!  We joined Mrs. Pina's class to listen.

Thank you so much to our parent volunteers who helped to make our field trip to The Thinkery fun and successful!  We had a blast and learned a lot!  We also really enjoyed having a wonderful picnic in absolutely gorgeous weather at Mueller Park.  Here are a ton of pictures from our great field trip!