News for the Week of March 25th

The Monkeys had so much fun planting our jalapeno plants on Monday!  We have been taking turns watering them each day and are already enjoying watching them grow.  We will be planting our cilantro seeds in another week.

In math, we finished up our unit on subtraction.  We will be taking an assessment tomorrow morning and we will also create a subtraction craft this week.  Our next unit will be "Developing Number Concepts to 20."  We will focus on seeing teen numbers in a variety of ways.

In language arts, we read the poem, What Goes Together?, which focused on the sight word "for."  We wrote the word "for" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and colored the pictures.  We began a new unit called, "Poetry:  Fun With Words."  The students have learned that many poems have rhyming words, but some do not.  We have read many poems and discussed their meaning.  We discussed sensory words to describe pickles and then tasted a pickle.  We then applied that learning to the season of spring and wrote a sensory poem about spring.  We worked on a lot of mental imagery by reading poems such as Green Giant and My Neighbor's Dog is Purple.  We had to imagine in our minds what the object of those poems would look like and then draw and color it.  We also wrote a poem titled, "I Like Poem" and wrote about things we like and one thing that we "really" like.  We made a list one day of things that make us say, "Ouch!"  We then created a band-aid shape out of manila paper and wrote a poem titled, Ouch!  We will continue working on poetry next week and hope you are enjoying the pocket poems your child brings home.  We read a pocket poem last Monday-Thursday and will do the same this week.

In science, we began a new unit called Plant and Animal Characteristics.  We learned about plant characteristics this week and focused on the parts of a plant including roots, stem, leaves, flower.  We observed real plants in groups and studied the roots, stem, leaves and petals.  We then drew and colored what we observed and labeled the parts.  We will focus on the characteristics of animals this next week.

The Monkeys had a great time watching 5th grade's balloon launch on Friday morning.  We also got to see a real hot-air balloon!  The students were super excited!

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

Reminders

Please return the report card envelope if you have not already.  

Please return book envelopes by Monday morning each week.

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

4/9             STAAR Testing, 4th & 5th
4/10           STAAR Testing, 5th
4/16           PTA Meeting, 6:00 p.m.
4/19           Holiday, No School

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

Benjamin!

Morris April Birthdays:

Melvin-4/11

News for the Week of March 11th

The kindergarten field trip to the Thinkery was a hit!  The students loved the interactive, hands-on activities and had a ton of fun exploring all there was to offer there.  Thank you SO much to all of the parent chaperones that helped to guide and keep the students safe!  I still think some students enjoyed riding the big, yellow bus the most!

In math, we continued our unit on subtraction.  We worked more this week on writing number sentences to go with our subtraction problems.  We played a game where students drew a number from a stack of cards and had to draw that many of an object.  Then they drew a smaller number from a stack of cards and took away that many of the objects.  The students then wrote their number sentence.  This next week the students will finish our unit on subtraction and take an assessment the following Monday.

In language arts, we read the poem, One Yummy Lunch, which focused on the sight word "one."  We wrote the word "one" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and then drew and colored a picture of their favorite lunch food.  We continued our unit in language arts called, "Expository Text in Focus."  We read nonfiction books about ladybugs and learned many facts.  The students helped to create a chart where we wrote what they already knew, wrote questions we still had about ladybugs and then we wrote our new learning about ladybugs.  The students labeled a ladybug, wrote a caption about ladybugs and wrote many ladybug facts in their own little book of facts.  We also had fun making a picture of a ladybug together.  We will hang our ladybugs and writing in the hallway this week.  Be sure to come and see!  This next week, we will begin a new unit called, "Poetry:  Fun With Words."

In science, we learned about the basic needs of plants and animals.  The students learned that plants need air, water, soil, sunlight and space.  We learned that plants make their own food in their leaves by using water and sunlight (photosynthesis).  The students also learned that animals need air, food, water and shelter.  The students were interested to learn that plants make oxygen for animals and humans and we provide the plants with carbon dioxide.  This week, we will begin a new unit about the characteristics of plants and animals.

The Monkeys had a great time learning about our superstar student, Jonah!

We were able to learn all about Jonah's life and interests!  We will announce our next superstar student on Friday, March 29th.

Reminders

Please bring any items for our kindergarten jalapeno and cilantro garden project that you may have signed up to donate on the SignUpGenius on Monday morning, March 25th.

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

Upcoming Dates to Remember:

3/29           Kona Ice after school
4/9             STAAR Testing, 4th & 5th
4/10           STAAR Testing, 5th
4/16           PTA Meeting, 6:00 p.m.
4/19           Holiday, No School

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

None

Morris March Birthdays:

Jonah-3/20

Happy Birthday Jonah!