Week of October 23rd

The Monkeys had a very busy week of school last week!  We had a counselor lesson, we began meeting with PROS from Westwood High School, it was Red Ribbon Week, we had an author visit from Bridget Heos and we had our school's 20th anniversary!  WOW!!!  What a week!  Here are some photos from the Bridget Heos author visit!

This week will follow as busy also with Pumpkin math, academic activities that have a fall/Halloween theme, the start of our German language enrichment and the 50th day of school!

In math, we will begin learning about 3 dimensional shapes this week.  We will compare them to 2D shapes and discuss what we notice.  Are there similarities?  Are there differences?

In language arts, we will read stories to focus on character's actions and the reasons for their actions.  We will also be working on retelling stories and making predictions.  In writing, we are going to continue our work with phonics and handwriting.  We will also be writing about what we have learned in the first 50 days of school.  We read the poem Five Little Pumpkins today and illustrated it.  We are all very excited that we will have spooky stories in the library tomorrow afternoon!  The library has been decorated and it looks awesome!

In science, we are continuing our unit on magnets.  Please focus on the words "magnetic" and "nonmagnetic" with your child to help them understand that vocabulary.  The students had a great time exploring things that were magnetic and nonmagnetic in our classroom last week.

In social studies, we have continued to discuss cultures that shape our community.  We read Too Many Tamales and learned about the Mexican culture.  Students had the opportunity to try a taste of a tamale.  Some students tried and enjoyed the taste and some students did not want to try.  It can be hard to try new things.

We all had a great time at our Canyon Creek Elementary 20th birthday assembly and celebration last Friday morning!

The Monkeys were excited to learn all about our superstar student, Riaan, last week!  We heard about his life and interests!

This week we will learn all about our new superstar student, Anakin.

Week of October 16th

The Monkey class is now a SHINE class!!

https://youtu.be/NSb6E4hlSV4

We were SO excited to hang our SHINE poster outside of our classroom door!  We were also announced on the morning broadcast as a SHINE class and our class name is on the bulletin board in the hallway on the way to the cafeteria!  Way to go Monkeys!

We also won the Golden Spatula award on Friday for excellent cafeteria behavior!  We have been rockin' this past week!

Next week in math, we will continue our study of 2 dimensional shapes.  We will notice the attributes of 2D shapes, before moving on to our 3 dimensional shapes unit.  We will then compare 2D shapes to 3D shapes.  

In language arts, we will work more on retelling stories and learn about characters actions and the reasons for their actions.  In writing, we will focus on labeling when writing.  We are still learning about various cultures that shape our community in social studies.

In science, we will finish our unit on forms of energy and then move into our unit on magnets.

The Monkey class was very excited to learn all about our superstar student, Tyler!  We were able to hear about his life and interests!

The Monkeys will be happy to learn about our next superstar student, Riaan!

Week of October 9th

Thank you so much to all of you for coming to the parent/teacher fall conferences!  I hope you have a better understanding of your child's goals this school year.  We have been working hard each day and will continue to do so throughout the year.

The Monkeys had a great time meeting their 3rd grade reading buddy/buddies on Friday afternoon.  We will meet with them each Friday afternoon and the students will read together.  The first half of the school year some students go upstairs with their 3rd grade reading buddy, while other students stay downstairs in our room with their buddy.  They will switch the second half of the year.  That way, every student gets a turn to go upstairs to the 3rd grade rooms.

During language arts this upcoming week, we will be focusing on text to text connections and text to world connections in reading.  In writing, we will begin our phonics program and we just got our Handwriting Without Tears books!  We will begin more structured instruction on handwriting that will hopefully help students with their formation of letters.  In social studies, we are learning how culture shapes our community.  We will learn about how each of our families has a culture and how that helps to make us unique!

During math, we will begin our unit of study about geometry.  We will start with 2 dimensional shapes.  In science, we are going to continue to learn about forms of energy.

The Monkeys were happy to learn all about our last superstar, Summer!  We got to hear all about her life and interests!

We are excited to learn about our next superstar student, Tyler!

Week of September 25th

There is one more week of the Box Tops collection!  The Monkey class is leading in Kindergarten, although we are not yet in the top 5 of the whole school.

In math this past week we focused on learning about number lines/number tracks.  We noticed what numbers were "just before" and "just after" a particular number.  We also continued counting and recording collections of objects.  We are working on an anchor chart of counting strategies.  Next week, we will begin sorting and classifying information in math.

In language arts, we learned about the meaning of characters, setting and events in a story.  We read a variety of books and recorded our favorite characters in our reading response journals, as well as the setting in the book This is Not My Hat and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Next week, we will review retelling events in a story, focus on what an author is telling mostly about in a story and review characters, setting and events.  In social studies, we are almost finished with our unit on being a citizen in a community and community helpers.  We made a community helpers flip book with pictures of our faces!  In writing, everyone completed their first published story.  We are going to focus on writing stories about our fall/autumn experiences next week.

In science, we focused on changes due to heating and cooling.  We froze popsicles and watched them melt as we ate them outside.  We then made apple juice popsicles of our own and froze them to notice the change from liquid to solid.  We melted chocolate chips with our hands/body heat and a heating pad.  We then put our melted chocolate chips in ice and noticed how the chocolate hardened.  We also watched crayons melt when using a hot plate (while the students were a safe distance away).

The Monkeys were excited to learn all about our superstar student, Swara!  We were able to hear all about her life and interests!

Next week, we will get to learn about our next superstar student, Summer!