March 16th-March 20th

Lots of important dates. I am giving out dates for the rest of the year. Ahhhh!

March 24th: We will be traveling to the high school again this year to see the 5th grade Opera.

April 14th: Field Trip to Davidson United Methodist Church for an organ demonstration

April 30th: Artist Play (in the gym) combined with the gallery crawl (in our classroom afterward)
        Hopefully we will get lines out next week!

May 5th: Our last visit to the Laurel's Nursing Home

May 12th: We will be going on a field trip to Hiddenite for gym mining!

June 2nd: End of Year Party (in our classroom)

What a week we have had! The leprechaun came and DESTROYED our classroom. He left gold coins, glitter and paint on everything. Math night was so fun. Thanks to everyone who came!

Math Workshop:

This week we kept the same tubs as last week. We are still reviewing time and place value. For children who have master the tens and ones place, we have moved on to the hundreds place. We are working on building numbers with the base ten blocks (tens and ones) and also looking at the number already built and stating what number it is. Everyone is really doing well with place value so far. Examples of questions we have been asking...

1. How many tens and how many ones in the number 26? How do you know?
2. Can you build the number 49 using base ten blocks?
3. Which number is bigger, 32 or 23? Why?
4. Looking at this number that is already built with base ten blocks, what number is it? How do you know?

Reader's Workshop:

This week we have really spent our time and energy working on passion projects. We have been sitting down with each child to create dash facts about their topic. Once we got quick facts down, we brainstormed about different things they could do. We discussed couplet poems, acrostic poems, non fiction writing pieces, fiction stories about the topic, labeling a picture, a list of rules (for sports, playing minecraft etc.) Each child needs 10 things to put in their passion project so we need to get busy! If you still have not sent in your supplies, please do so quickly! Once we get everyone started, we should be good to go as far as the writing pieces. It is getting everyone started that's taking a little while! We were able to get through all leveled books with everyone but we decided not to do word sorts.

Word study phonogram rules are actually the same as last week! The words this week are: bacon, live/live (with the i making different sounds), alive, heat, box, three, if, stand, come and wing.

Thematic Centers:

This week we studied Degas. We learned that he really enjoyed painting dancers, especially ballerinas! We rotated through 4 main centers:
1. Sculpt a ballerina out of pipe cleaners and tin foil. These are turning out really neat!
2. Make a dancer out of construction paper. These are hanging and they are turning out so cool!
3. Degas word search
4. Illustrate the book "How to spot a Degas."

Hope everyone has a great weekend.
Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz