News for the Week of January 21st

Thank you all so much for coming to our school's STEAM night last Thursday!  The turnout was great and our constellation telescopes were a hit!  We hope you enjoyed STEAM night and learned a lot!

In math this week, we began our unit on addition.  We joined together groups of counters, pictures of animals and cards with cookies on them.  We counted how many were in each group and then counted them altogether to find out how many there were in all.  We focused on vocabulary such as "add," "altogether," "in all," "join," and "more."  At the end of the week we worked with the addition sign and the equals sign and made number sentences.  We will continue our unit on addition next week.

In language arts, we read the poem, Lots of Boxes, which focused on the sight word "of."  We wrote the word "of" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and then colored the illustrations.  Our class integrated social studies into our reading this week and learned more about needs and wants, as well as why people have jobs.  We learned that people work to make money so they can buy what they need and maybe some things that they want.  We learned that we have to meet our needs first before we can buy things we want.  We also began to learn about jobs in the community and made a fun book about some different community helpers.  During word study, we learned about  words that end in -at and -ay.  We noticed how these words rhyme and we then learned about parts of words.  We continued our work in our handwriting book by writing words for the sounds animals make and then we worked on writing numbers.  Once we finish writing our numbers in the handwriting book, we will be finished.  Look for handwriting books to come home to keep in the next couple of weeks.  Next week, we will begin a new unit on Folktales, Fairy Tales and Fables and we will work on many 100th day of school activities.

In science, we finished our unit on seasons and weather.  We completed our weather assessment.  We will begin our unit on Objects in the Sky next week.

The Monkeys are excited to learn about our next superstar student, Ryan, next week!

Reminders

Please work on making a shirt with 100 items on it for our 100th day of school on Friday, February 1st.  Your child will wear this shirt to school that day and we will have a parade through the hall.  

Please remember to complete and send the "My child has my heart because..." page in your child's folder by Monday, January 28th.  We will hang these in the hallway as a grade level.

Please sign and return your child's report card envelope if you have not already.

Please send a regular black and white composition notebook for your child's math journal if possible.

Please be sure to check out the "Dates to Remember" below. 

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

1/31          Class Photo & Spring Individual Photos
2/1            100th Day of School
2/13           Coffee Chat, 7:45 a.m., Library
2/14           Valentine's Day Party
2/18-2/19   No School

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

Ryan!

Morris January Birthdays:

Agastya-1/18

News for the Week of January 14th

We had a lot to do this week and the week seemed to fly by quickly!  We hope you will all be able to attend STEAM night on Thursday, January 24th from 6-7 p.m.

In math this week, we learned about weight and used the vocabulary "heavier" and "lighter."  These vocabulary words helped us to compare the weight of various objects using a balance.  We also focused on capacity and used the vocabulary "holds more" and "holds less" to compare containers.  The students enjoyed watching water being poured from one container to another to see which had the greatest capacity.  We then took an assessment on measurement.  Next week, we will begin a unit on addition.

In language arts, we read the poem, What Am I?, which focused on the sight word "not."  We wrote the word "not" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and then colored the illustrations.  Our class also finished our work on asking questions and finding answers about penguins.  We wrote about penguins and we will hang the books we made in the hallway this week.  We began integrating social studies this week by learning about needs and wants.  We discussed how people all need food/water, shelter, air and clothing.  We will continue learning about needs and wants next week.  We also learned about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and how he was important and contributed to our society.   We discussed the importance of the holiday, MLK, Jr. Day.  We made a card about how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream and we then drew and wrote about our dream for the future.  During word study, we learned about changing the beginning sound of a word to make a new word.  We noticed how these words then rhymed.  We also discussed vowels and consonants and made cvc words together.  We then worked on words that end in -an.  We continued our work in our handwriting book by copying a paragraph, a poem and some sentences.

In science, we continued learning about weather changes over the seasons.  We kept a weather chart each day of the weather we observed and made predictions for the next day.  We also sorted pictures of various types of weather into the correct season.  we will finish our unit on weather this week during science.

The Monkeys were excited to learn all about our latest superstar student, Leighton!  We got to learn all about his life and interests.

Reminders

Please work on making a shirt with 100 items on it for our 100th day of school on Friday, February 1st.  Your child will wear this shirt to school that day and we will have a parade through the hall.  

Please remember to complete and send the "My child has my heart because..." page in your child's folder by Monday, January 28th.  We will hang these in the hallway as a grade level.

Please sign and return your child's report card envelope if you have not already.

Please send a regular black and white composition notebook for your child's math journal if possible.

Please be sure to check out the "Dates to Remember" below. 

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

1/24          STEAM Night, 6-7 p.m.
1/25          Pajama Day
1/31          Class Photo & Spring Individual Photos
2/1            100th Day of School
2/13           Coffee Chat, 7:45 a.m., Library
2/14           Valentine's Day Party
2/18-2/19   No School

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

None

Morris January Birthdays:

Agastya-1/18

Happy Birthday Agastya!

News for the Week of January 7th

It was great to have my monkeys back at school this week!  Time off to relax is great, but it is also nice to be back in a routine again.  I hope you all had a wonderful break!  We started off our week by remaking our social contract for this second half of the year.  The students contributed the words that they thought were important to follow, and then we all signed the contract.  We promised to be kind, respectful, gentle, calm, to listen, to use self-control, to put forth effort, no put-downs, etc.  Our class discussed why the social contract is important to follow and how it will help us be better students, friends and people.

In math this week, we focused on taller and shorter during our measurement unit.  The students compared items and used the vocabulary "taller," "shorter," or "the same," to describe the objects.  We will continue our measurement unit next week and focus on weight and capacity.

In language arts, we read the poem, I Am, which focused on the sight word "am."  We wrote the word "am" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and then colored the illustrations.  Our class also discussed New Year's Eve and New Year's day and the customs and traditions surrounding those holidays.  We discussed new year's resolutions and came up with our own resolutions.  We created a cute craft and wrote what our resolutions were.  Come and see our work that is hanging in the hallway!  We also began our unit called, "Asking Question, Finding Answers."  We created a chart about penguins by writing what we know about them, what we want to know about them and what we learned about penguins after researching them.  We read nonfiction books about penguins and listened to PebbleGo online.  We also watched a video about penguins.  We already knew a lot about penguins and learned even more interesting information.  We will be writing about what we learned and will make it into a book.  We will work on that this week and will then display them in the hallway.  We also worked on making a little book during word study about numbers.  We matched the numeral to the number word and wrote number words.  We also drew the amount of things for each number.  We continued our work in our handwriting book by writing some words and writing labels for a person's body parts.  We are almost done with our handwriting books and only have a few more weeks to work in them.

In science, we began to learn about how weather changes over the seasons.  We read about seasonal changes and made trees for each season and painted how the tree changes.  Next week, we will make a weather chart to track weather daily and we will continue to discuss and learn about seasonal changes.

The Monkeys are excited to learn all about our next superstar student, Leighton!

Reminders

Please work on making a shirt with 100 items on it for our 100th day of school on Friday, February 1st.  Your child will wear this shirt to school that day and we will have a parade through the hall.  

There will be a pink page with a note attached in this upcoming week's Tuesday folder.  It is titled, "My child has my heart because..."  Please complete the page and write about why your child has your heart and attach a picture of them to the heart shape in the lower left hand corner of the page.  Send these back to school with your child by Monday, January 28th.  We will display these in the hallway for the month of February.

Please be sure to check out the "Dates to Remember" below. 

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

1/21          MLK, Jr. Holiday-NO SCHOOL
1/24          STEAM Night, 6-7 p.m.
1/31          Class Photo & Spring Individual Photos
2/1            100th Day of School
2/14           Valentine's Day Party

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

Leighton!

Morris January Birthdays:

Agastya-1/18