Week of October 13, 2009

I hope everyone enjoyed the long, chilly weekend. I did something I’ve never done before—slept in a tent in Wisconsin’s below freezing weather—I was well-prepared & slept well!

Good timing! The Painted Lady butterfly emerged in our classroom this morning! We had watched this catepillar eat, grow & then make a chrysalis around itself. And this is what happens in our Kindness story this week, “Butterfly House”. This week’s important comprehension strategy is learning about point of view; this story is written in the first-person point of view. The vocabulary to know for Friday’s test is: larva, nectar, chrysalis, transformed, drift. This week’s spelling words all have the short /i/ sound. Congratulations to all who earned challenge words, and to all who spelled all 10 words correctly last Friday!

We are learning about nouns, verbs and adjectives, to make our writing more “colorful”. For practice, we’re writing a “formula” poem about Halloween which uses a variety of nouns, verbs & adjectives.

In math students are earning a stick of Doublemint gum by automatically saying the answers to a stack of doubles facts in 45 seconds or less. Working for automatic recall of basic addition & subtraction facts, we’re also practicing the different addition strategies we learned last week, and are beginning to apply them to subtraction. Ask your child to explain what a “fact family” is.

Today’s Tasting takes us to the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on Egypt.

We’ve had fun in Science learning about & comparing properties of rocks & minerals. This week we explore the composition of rocks by dissecting a cookie “rock” (Thank you to Eleanor & her mom!) Then we take a little break from rocks to start the process of making our own soil (& learning about composting).

Homework – Parents: please return your form confirming the time of your conference; also, you can still send in kitchen & yard plant waste, and 2 liter bottles any time up until Thursday.

Daily: Read aloud for 20 minutes and fill in your October Book It Calendar; practice your spelling words & math facts (Every day do a Mad Minute worksheet and use your triangle flash cards.) See how many vocabulary words you can use in your conversation!
Due Thursday: bring your library book if you want to check out a new one! Spelling workbook, pages 30-33; those doing challenge words, write a meaningful sentence with 5 of the challenge words instead of doing pages 32 & 33. Leave your sentences in the spelling workbook, at this week’s lesson.

For Friday: reading & vocabulary tests, spelling test on short /i/ words
For next Monday:: Story Map on a book you read at home, Mad Minute packet B1; gym shoes