Week of March 11th

This week we wrapped up our Unit on Marble rolls. We did this by solving problems using all of the information taught in this unit and creating a mega marble roll for the solution. Some examples of the problems they had to work out making these mega rolls was:
      -Make a marble roll that gets the marble to make a jump, go around a corner and land in a cup at the end.
      -Make a marble roll that gets the marble to go down, then up, then down again, around a corner, and into a cup.
     -Make a marble roll that includes at least:  1 downhill ramp, 1 unphill ramp, and 1 jump.

Most of the groups were successful at designing their marble rolls.  It was fun to listen to their discussions as they worked. 

This week we also had Hands on Nature.  I would like to thank Cecelia and Lynn for coming in and teaching about owls.  We learned about the different adaptations that owls have to help them survive such as their ears,  large eyes, silent wings and claws.  Ask your child to tell you about these adaptations.  We learned about the sounds that different types of owls make.  Some examples of owls we listened to were a barn owl, barred owl, long earred owl and a great horned owl.  The class tried to mimic the sounds.  They then had a quiz to see if they could identify them after hearing the sounds randomly.  Lastly we got to dissect owl pellets.  We found out that owls are hungry animals because several of the groups found two skulls in their pellets and one group even found three skulls.  Check out the photos from our day.

In writing we continue our unit on Fairy Tales.  We will begin writing our own next week.  In math we will be working on a new unit of addition and subtraction working with larger numbers and focusing on place value.  We will also do some more problem solving. 

In social studies we are continuing with our Cultures unit and talked about wants vs. needs.  Next week we will look at comparing some different cultures. 

I am looking forward to seeing everyone next week for conferences. 

Have a great weekend,
Nancy