Week of January 13th

This week in math we began talking about penguins.  I introduced them to where Anartica is and how penguins live there.  We talked about how cold it is there and how we were going to measure ourselves to see what color snowsuit we would be wearing when we pretended to travel there.  The color of the snowsuit was based on our heights.  We then made a graph.  14 students would wear a blue snowsuit, 5 would wear a red snowsuit and no one would wear the green snowsuit.  We then learned about the King penguin and the Rockhopper penguin.  We read a poem about each, watched a video about Rockhopper penguins and penguins in general and filled out a data sheet about each of them.  We then compared the penguin heights and our height to one of the penguins.  We will learn about other types of penguins when we get to Unit 6.  Today we began Unit 5 which is on geometry.  We talked about 2-dimensional shapes and what an attribute was. 

In Reader's and Writer's workshop we continue to learn about non-fiction books and writing them.  Students are doing an amazing job writing their own non-fiction books.  They have great facts, and are drawing illustrations that teach the reader as well using close-ups, arrows and labels. 

We have finished our Geography unit for Social Studies.  Next week we will begin our Science unit called "A Sticky Situation: Designing Walls".  This is an engineering unit and we will be learning what an engineer is and what the engineer process is.  We will learn about different types of soil and materials that we can use to design the best wall.  It should be an exciting unit for students as it will be very hands on. 

I would like to remind families to please help your child remember their library books on Monday.  A lot of students are not bringing them in that day.  Also if books are overdue, students will not be allowed to take out more books even if you have returned 1 or 2 books.  Next week please have your child bring their books in on Tues. and I will find a day for them to check out new books because we do not have school on Monday. 

Also please remember to send your child to school each day with coat, hat, mittens, boots and snow pants.  Please do not assume that we will not go outside that day.

If you are interested in the International Pot Luck Dinner, a notice went home today with the information for this evening. 

Have a wonderful weekend,
Nancy