News for the Week of February 18th

We had a short 3 day week!  I hope you enjoyed the long four day weekend you had with your children last weekend!

In math, we completed our addition unit.  We took our addition assessment that I will send home this week.  We also read the book The Watermelon Seed, by Greg Pizzoli.  Then we created a watermelon slice craft with a number sentence inside.  They are hanging in our hallway now.  Come and check them out!  We will begin our subtraction unit tomorrow.

In language arts, we read the poem, I See This, which focused on the sight word "this."  We wrote the word "this" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and then colored the illustrations.  We focused on learning about fables this week.  We learned that most fables have animals that act like humans (personification) and there is a moral to the story. We colored the pictures of events from The Ant and the Grasshopper and then cut them out and glued them to a sentence strip.  We folded the strip and put it in our book boxes and can now retell the story.  We completed a reading response after reading The Lion and the Mouse and drew the actions of a character from the story and then told the reason for those actions.  For example, the mouse chewed the rope to get the lion out.  The reason why is because the lion spared the mouse's life earlier in the story.  We also read The Tortoise and the Hare and made a tortoise puppet and a hare puppet.  We can retell the story now with the help of this craft we made.  We will begin a new unit tomorrow called Expository Text in Focus.  We will be reading nonfiction text about important African-American historical figures that have contributed to our society.

In science, we finished our unit on living and nonliving things.  We took an assessment on Friday that I will send home this week.  Next week, we will begin a new social studies unit on how technology causes change and how it has improved our society over the years.

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

Reminders

We will be sending home field trip permission slips in our Tuesday folder this week for our Thinkery field trip.  Please sign and return them.

This upcoming Friday we will celebrate Read Across American/Dr. Seuss' birthday.  We will read Dr. Seuss books and do activities related to the books all day long.  Your child may dress up as their favorite Dr. Seuss character or wear a Dr. Seuss shirt.

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

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

2/26           PTA Meeting, 6 p.m.
3/1             Read Across America/Dr. Seuss' Birthday
                  (Dress as your favorite Dr. Seuss character or wear a Dr. Seuss shirt)
3/8             Multicultural Fair, 5-8 p.m.
3/13           Thinkery Field Trip
3/19-3/22   Spring Break

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

Lauren!

Morris February Birthdays:

Luka-2/17

Happy Birthday Luka!

News for the Week of February 11th

Thank you very much to all of our parent volunteers that helped set up our Valentine's Day party, run the stations and clean up!  We truly appreciate all of your time and hard work!  Without you, I could not have pulled it off alone!  Also, thank you very much to all of our parents that attended the Valentine's Day party!  Your children were very happy and excited to see you!  Also, thanks a lot for helping your child make their Valentines!  They had so much fun delivering them!

In math, we have almost completed our addition unit.  We will finish it up this next week during our short 3 day week.  We will take an assessment and complete a cute addition craft that we will display soon.  Our next unit is subtraction.

In language arts, we read the poem, Good Helper, which focused on the sight word "my."  We wrote the word "my" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and then colored the illustrations.  We focused on learning about folktales this week by reading Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Billy Goats Gruff and The Three Little Pigs.  We learned that most folktales are short, were passed down orally, have animals that can talk, involve trickery and may teach a lesson. We colored the pictures of events from Little Red Riding Hood and then cut them out along with a wolf head and made them into a book.  We can now retell the story with this book we made.  We completed a reading response after reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff and drew the actions of a character from the story and then told the reason for those actions.  For example, the youngest billy goat crossed the bridge because he wanted the green grass on the other side.  We put pictures from The Three Little Pigs in the correct sequence and made them into a "pig accordion book."  We can retell the story now with the help of this craft we made.  We will begin focusing on fables in reading next week.  We also focused on Presidents Day for social studies and wrote about why we would be a good president.  We made a cute craft to go with our writing.  During word study, we focused on deleting the initial sounds in words and said the remaining part.  We also reviewed the letter sounds we have learned and reviewed the meaning of vowels and consonants.  The students had fun playing a game where they took turns deleting the initial sounds of pictures of words.

In science, we learned about living and nonliving things.  We discussed how living things need food/water; air to breathe; can move on their own; grow; and reproduce.  We will continue this unit next week.

The Monkeys had fun learning about our superstar student, Aubrey!  We got to learn all about her life and interests!

Reminders

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

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

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

2/18-2/19   No School
2/22           Twin Day-dress with a friend as twins
2/26           PTA Meeting, 6 p.m.
3/1             Read Across America/Dr. Seuss' Birthday
                  (Dress as your favorite Dr. Seuss character or wear a Dr. Seuss shirt)
3/8             Multicultural Fair, 5-8 p.m.
3/13           Thinkery Field Trip
3/19-3/22   Spring Break

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

None

Morris February Birthdays:

Luka-2/17

News for the Week of February 4th

The Monkeys really appreciate their parents writing the very kind and sweet "My child has my heart because..." pages.  They are so wonderful to read and it will be a treasure for your child to keep that I will add to their end of year book.  If you have not seen them all displayed together, come check them out in the hallway.

In math this week, we worked more on addition and we practiced writing the plus sign and the equals sign in number sentences.  We drew number cards to create various addition equations.  We increased numbers also to make the addition a bit more challenging.  We have about a week and a half before this unit is complete.  We will then begin our unit on subtraction.

In language arts, we read the poem, Silly Rhymes, which focused on the sight word "look."  We wrote the word "look" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and then colored the illustrations.  We also wrote our own silly rhyme at the bottom of the poem.  We continued learning about fairly tales this week by reading Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Rapunzel.  We noticed how all of these fairy tales began with "Once upon a time," and ended with "happily ever after."  We also noticed the good and evil characters, the setting, the problem and solution and the element of magic.  We colored the characters from Jack and the Beanstalk and then cut them out and are now able to retell the story.  We completed a reading response after reading Snow White and Seven Dwarfs and wrote what we would want if we had a magic apple.  We will begin focusing on folktales in reading next week.  We will also work on a few Valentine's Day activities.  In writing, we wrote about what love is to us and made cute cats after reading Love, Splat.  Our "Love is" cats are displayed in our hallway.  During word study we focused on words with 3, 4 and 5 parts.  We blended sounds together to make words.  We also listened to Mrs. Morris say word parts and then had to figure out what word Mrs. Morris was saying.  We finished writing our numbers in our handwriting book and took our orange handwriting books home!  All students have really improved their handwriting this year!  They came a long way from handwriting at the very beginning of the year.

In science, we finished our unit on Objects in the Sky and took an assessment.  We then began our unit on Living and Nonliving Things.  We will continue our living/nonliving unit next week.  We will also learn about Presidents' Day for social studies next Friday.

The Monkeys had fun learning about our superstar student, Avery!  We got to learn all about her life and interests!

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

Reminders

We will exchange Valentine's Day cards with our class on the morning of Thursday, February 14th.  If you and your child would like to make or buy valentines to exchange, please send one for each student in our class.  We have 21 students.  Do not address them to anyone, but your child may sign their name.  This makes the passing out of cards quick and easy.  We will make Valentine's Day mailbox bags at school.  Thank you!

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

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

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

2/12           Scholastic Book Order Due
2/13           Coffee Chat, 7:45 a.m., Library
2/14           Valentine's Day Party, 2 p.m.
2/18-2/19   No School
2/22           Twin Day-dress with a friend as twins
2/26           PTA Meeting, 6 p.m.
3/1             Read Across America/Dr. Seuss' Birthday
                  (Dress as your favorite Dr. Seuss character or wear a Dr. Seuss shirt)

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

Aubrey!

Morris February Birthdays:

Luka-2/17

News for the Week of January 28th

Thank you so much for helping your child make a 100 things shirt for the 100th day of school!  They all looked FABULOUS!  The students had a lot of fun on Friday and we hope you enjoyed our 100th day parade!  Thank you for coming!  Thank you to Lucas's dad and Victoria's mom for volunteering and helping transport our backpacks/lunch boxes!  Also, thank you to our class room mom, Jeanette Dunbar, for helping get things together with the other class room moms for our 100th day of school snacks and prizes!  Below are pictures from our 100th day activities!  We painted, listened to books about the 100th day of school, participated in 100th day stations and we had a "100" things snack!

In math this week, we continued our unit on addition.  We drew number cards or pictures of amounts of items and made number sentences.  For instance, a picture of a ladybug had one wing with 5 spots and the other wing had 2 spots.  The students then wrote the equation, 5+2=7.  We continued this with other amounts and items throughout the week.  We also spiraled previous concepts we have learned in our math journal during math stations.  The students used their iPads in the technology station to work on addition problems and skills.  We will continue our work with addition next week.  The following week we will end the unit and begin a unit on subtraction.

In language arts, we read the poem, Rain, which focused on the sight word "on."  We wrote the word "on" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and then colored the illustrations.  This week we had a counselor lesson from Mrs. Hougham.  The students always love learning social skills from Mrs. Hougham and are always excited to see her!  We also began a unit on Fairy Tales, Folktales and Fables, but we are starting with fairy tales.  We discussed what we know already about fairy tales and noticed that fairy tales have good and evil characters, magic, a setting such as a castle or forest, a problem and a solution and usually begin with, "Once upon a time," and end with "happily ever after."  We read The Princess and the Pea and we will continue with more fairly tales and activities next week.  We also worked a lot on prepping for the 100th day of school.  We read books about the 100th day of school, counted to 100, sang songs, wrote and made crafts.  We made a list of what we will be doing when we are 100 years old.  We created art of ourselves as 100 year old people.  They are hanging in our hallway.  Come and check them out!  We also painted 100 gumballs in a gumball machine and will display those in the hallway next week, too!  In writing, we wrote new stories and will complete them next week.  The students are working hard to apply their letter sound knowledge to their writing. We will resume word study next week as our other activities took up most of our time.  We have a few more numbers to write in our handwriting books next week before we are finished.

In science, we began our unit on Objects in the Sky.  The students understand that day and night are a pattern that repeat.  We discussed what objects we only see in the day sky, objects we only see in the night sky and what objects we can see in the day and night sky.  We wrote about objects we have observed in the day and night sky.  We will continue and complete this unit next week.  Our next unit will be Living and Nonliving Things.

The Monkeys had fun learning about our superstar student, Ryan!  We got to learn all about his life and interests!

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

Reminders

We will exchange Valentine's Day cards with our class on the morning of Thursday, February 14th.  If you and your child would like to make or buy valentines to exchange, please send one for each student in our class.  We have 21 students.  Do not address them to anyone, but your child may sign their name.  This makes the passing out of cards quick and easy.  We will make Valentine's Day mailbox bags at school.  Thank you!

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

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

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

2/13           Coffee Chat, 7:45 a.m., Library
2/14           Valentine's Day Party, 2 p.m.
2/18-2/19   No School
2/22           Twin Day-dress with a friend as twins
2/26           PTA Meeting, 6 p.m.

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

Avery!

Morris February Birthdays:

Luka-2/17