Literary Pumpkins!

The literary pumpkins were SO CUTE!!  They were all so creative.  Thank you for helping your child with this fun project.
They are now on display in the library for the whole school to enjoy!

In language arts this week, we continued topic writing about spiders.  We worked on many of the non fiction print concepts such as labelling and diagrams for our book.
We also worked on creating mental images (what do you picture in your head while a story is being read).  We created mental images to the poem "My Neighbor's Dog is Purple".  We discussed how your mental image can chage as the story changes.

In math, we worked on graphing.  We constructed a type of graph called a glyph.  A glyph is a pictoral form of data collections. 
In our glyph, we constructed our cat to reflect what type of candy we prefer, if we have a pet cat, and which book we enjoyed most:

We also made a pie graph to show to answer the question "Are you afraid of spiders?"
Our pie was pretty evenly divided:

 





Next week:
*Literary pumpkins will go home on Wednesday.  If you would prefer to come pick up your child's pumpkin, you may do so.  You may go to the library to get it.
*As the weather gets a little cooler, please remember to put your child's name inside their jacket.

A busy week!

Wow!  We stayed so busy last week!  We had a great time reading some Halloween type of books.
We read When Itchy Witchy Sneezes and wrote about something the witch could blow away with her huge sneeze:

We also read Are You my Mummy?  We then wrote our text to self connections about what we do when we are scared:

During writing, we are composing our own non fiction spider books.  We are using features of non fiction in our independent writing...up close pictures, labelling, important facts.  We have learned a lot of interesting things about spiders!

During math, we are constructing and interpreting graphs.  We read Miss Spider's Tea Party.  We then tasted three types of tea...red, blue, and green.  The students then figured out a way to organize our information and constructed a graph. 

During social studies, we learned about important American Symbols.  We learned neat facts about the American flag, The White House, the Liberty Bell, and the bald eagle.

Reminders for the week:
*Thursday and Friday are early dismissal days.  The students get out of school at 12:00.  We will be eating lunch on these days.  I strongly encourage you to send a lunch from home.  We will also be going to specials on the half days.
*October 26 is the deadline to order a yearbook.  Please see the online Tuesday Folder for more information.
*This week is Red Ribbon Week.  Lots of fun activities are in store!

Wild Things!

This week, we read Where the Wild Things Are.  We made text to self connections by writing about what we do when we feel wild.

 

We also made a graphic organizer of words to describe the main character Max.   We decided he was "naughty, wild, creative, sneaky".  We then used our imagination and drew our own wild thing and wrote describing words about it. 

 

In math, we created wild creatures.  Everyone spun a spinner to see how they would decorate their creature.  We learned that the bigger the space on the spinner, the higher the probability that you would land there.  Therefore, most of us landed on "stripes and spots" and fewer landed on just "spots" or just "stripes".  We then analyzed our data:

 



In social studies, we learned about Christopher Columbus.  We created a map to show his journey to the new land.


To further celebrate Columbus's successful voyage, we conducted a science experiment. We made predictions about if an object would sink or float. We then tested our predictions by placing objects in water and observing the results. We recorded our findings on paper.

Reminders:
*Wednesday is library and home reader day.  Please return your books in order to receive new ones. 

Elmer week

This week, we enjoyed reading many Elmer the Elephant books.  Elmer was one of a kind because he was patchwork and because he liked to play jokes on the other elephants.  A lesson we learned from the book is that it okay to be different.  We made a text to self connection and wrote about what makes each of us unique and special:

 

 

In math, we taste tested apples and made a pictograph of our favorite type of apple:

 

We were all surprised at how great yellow apples taste!  The most people in the class liked yellow.

 

In social studies, we finished our unit on maps.  We learned the name of the city, state, country, conitinent, and planet that we live on.  We located these places on a map and then created a book of maps.

 

In science, we learned how to use a balance and compare the mass of an apple to other objects.  We also worked with a partner to record observations about our apple.

 

This week:

*On Thursday, we will be going on our field trip!!  Your child will need to bring a lunch from home on this day because we will arrive back at school later than our usual lunch time.  It does not need to be in a sack....you can put it in their regular lunchbox.  If your child has a Wilchester shirt, please have them wear it on Thursday.  I am looking forward to a really fun field trip!!!

*Please contact me if you are not sure when your Fall conference time is. 

Please let me know if you are not able to attend your conference.