November 2-4

It is already November! Can you believe it?

This week we all voted at school! We discussed the importance of voting during the presidential election and how cool it is that our country allows us to vote. We also discussed that voting is a very private and personal matter and should be kept a secret. Ask your child about his/her experience at school casting their vote for who should be president. Ms. Alicia and I were blown away with how much information they knew already.

Math:

We started our geometry unit and learned the difference between 2-D and 3-D shapes. We experimented with building 3-D shapes in our classroom and compared and contrasted 2-D and 3-D shapes. We sorted them as well based on characteristics like, how many sides and vertices (points on the shape). The 3-D shapes that we learned about were: cylinder, rectangular prism, cone, pyramid, cube and sphere.

**We finally started sending math games home to play for a night! So sorry it has taken us so long to get these going. When it is your turn to play, enjoy the game for one night and then return it the next day for another student to play. Your child should be able to explain the directions to the game on their own, but we included directions just to be sure.

Writer's Workshop:

This month we will be learning about and writing comics! Today was a blast and the kids LOVED filling in speech bubbles for their very own Elephant and Piggy comics. Some of them were hilarious and they decided to take them home. Check it out! Your kids are so creative. They wrote for over 45 minutes today and were sad when we had to clean up for lunch.

Reader's Workshop:

We did not have word study as it was a short week. We did however get through all guided reading groups and handwriting groups.

Thematic Unit:

We are beginning our new unit, studying heroes. We started studying Eleanor Roosevelt and learned what a marvelous lady she was. She has preformed so many acts of kindness ranging from decorating the hospital for sick babies and families to serving Thanksgiving meals to the homeless and SO MUCH MORE! We are inspired to get out in our community and do acts of service. Tomorrow we will be picking up trash (with gloves) around the school. And next week we will be making scarves to take to the Ada Jenkins center. We will also be making "blessing bags" for people in need. We will need your help gathering all of these materials so look for an email and the sign up genius for next week!

This week we rotated through 2 centers since it was a short week.

1. Create a sculpture out of model magic that represents a good deed that Eleanor did. Write a sentence explaining what your sculpture represents. Let these dry out at home and they will harden without baking them.
2. Create a timeline of Eleanor's life. Cut out and glue the different milestones on a sentence strip. Record the years above. This was great for background knowledge of Eleanor's life and was a great opportunity to introduce a timeline. The kids did great with this!

Admin Blog:

http://csdpowerofwe.org/admin-blogs/

Also see the special note below from our intern Ms. Morgan!

"Hi, I am Ms.Morgan and I’m doing my 8th grade practicum with Mrs.Schultz. I love getting to learn & play with your children. They are kind, creative & so fun to be around!  My 8th grade practicum group is doing a “Pay It Forward” for children at Ada Jenkins in Davidson. We have partnered with the owner of Davidson Pizza Company to give children at the Ada Jenkins Center pizza after school. Some children in need also take home pizza to their families. I want to share “Pay It Forward” with you as an opportunity for your child to help other children in our community. Just stop into the Davidson Pizza Company with a $1 & tell them that you are from CSD and would like to add to “Pay It Forward”. Each $1 buys a slice of pizza for a child. Davidson Pizza Company will have paper to draw a picture, write a word or note & it will be put up on the “Pay It Forward” board. The children from Ada Jenkins will get a slice of pizza & a note from the board that puts a smile on their face. I am also happy to collect a dollar at school & let your child write a note.  I will take these to the Davidson Pizza Company.  If you wish to participate this is a fun opportunity for children to give to others!"

**The opportunity above ties in really well with who we are studying this week. :)

Have a great weekend,
Mrs. Schultz