Week of April 17th

The Monkeys have been very busy learning over the past couple of weeks!  It is SO hard to believe that there are only 6 weeks left of school.  This year is flying by so fast!  We have been very excited to see our jalapeno plants and cilantro grow each day.  We check them and water them right before our recess time in the afternoon.

Last week, on Thursday, April 13th, we were invited by the first grade classes to visit their chicks that hatched.  The Monkeys were excited to visit and loved the cute little chicks!

In social studies this past week, we finished up our learning about technology, how it helps us in our daily lives and how things are different now than long ago.  Ask your child how technology has changed our world.  Next week, we will begin a unit on plant life cycles in science.  In language arts, we began our research unit.  The students each chose an animal to research that was either a zoo animal or a reptile.  They are reading books about these animals, learning new information from PebbleGo and organizing their information.  We are going to continue researching and writing about our animals next week.  They are really enjoying reading non-fiction books about exciting animals!  In math, we worked on comparing 2D shapes and 3D solid figures.  The Monkeys had fun sorting their 3D objects from home on Wednesday!  We have some fun activities coming up in math this next week dealing with shapes.

Today we had fun celebrating Earth Day (which is actually tomorrow, April 22nd) and started off the day with a fun and informative assembly.  We learned information, sang songs and heard some Earth Day jokes.

Next Friday, April 28th, is book character dress up day!  This is another school-wide spirit day.  Your child may dress up as their favorite character and bring along the book that goes with their costume.  Please NO PROPS (ex:  swords, wands, etc.)  

Week of April 10th

The Monkeys had fun last week learning about our final Superstar student, Julia!  We got to learn all about her life and interests!

This week  in social studies we are learning about technology in our world and how it helps us in our daily lives.  We are also learning about how technology has caused change in our lives from long ago.  We know it helps us do things faster and makes many tasks easier.

In language arts, we are continuing our unit on poetry.  This week in reading we are working on writing a cinquain poem about a specific plant.  We are also continuing to read and take home a pocket poem each day this week.  Make sure you ask your child to read their pocket poem to you each day!  We are also writing poems each day this week.  We are having a lot of fun listening to poems and creating poems!

In math, we are focusing on different characteristics of 2D shapes and comparing them to 3D objects.  We have focused on sides and corners of shapes.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week and have a Happy Easter this weekend!

Week of March 27th

The Monkeys had a fun week at school last week!  In science, we finished our lessons on parts of a plant and began to learn about animal parts and characteristics.  We will continue learning about animal characteristics this week.  In language arts, we started a fun unit on poetry and began with sensory details and mental imagery.  Ask your child about the poems Green Giant and My Neighbor's Dog is Purple.  

We also wrote poems using sensory details.  We experienced pickles with our 5 senses and wrote a poem about them.  We also popped popcorn in an air popper and experienced it with all of our senses.  We brainstormed sensory words and wrote poems.  We are continuing our study of poetry this week.  In math, we have been learning about subtraction.  The students really enjoyed reading Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons.  After we read about his buttons popping off, we made Pete and created a subtraction story about his buttons.  Come check out our work in our hallway.  This week we will be working on problem solving in math and comparing 2D shapes to 3D shapes.  

Our class had a ton of fun watching the 5th graders launch their hot-air balloons last Friday morning!  We got to see a real hot-air balloon up close!  It was a really cool experience!

The Monkeys were excited to learn all about our Superstar student, Kaden, last week!  We were able to hear about his life and interests!

Our class had a great time learning about our new Superstar student, Julia, this morning!  She is our final Superstar student this school year.