Friday, April 24, 2015

We've Got Butterflies! (Almost)

Image result for insect loreWe are very excited that our caterpillars arrived here on Earth Day.  We will watch them go through their life cycle and then free the butterflies when the weather warms up.  We have started a class observation journal where we record our observations on the changes the caterpillars are going through.

In ELA we have read some wonderful books by our author of the month, Patricia Palacco, and we have worked on sequencing the events in her stories.
We continue to work on Our Best School Day Ever books.  Today we used black marker and watercolor to do our illustrations.

Our chapter on telling time is complete and the students love being able to look at the clock to tell me what time it is.  Please keep this skill fresh by asking your child for the time often.  Our next chapter will be measurement.

Important Dates:
April 27th- Chicken Barbecue and Challenge for Charity- See the teachers face off against the 8th graders in basketball and volleyball.  There will be a dribbling competition for the younger students.  All proceeds benefit Catholic Charities. 
May 11th- book report due  


Friday, April 17, 2015

    Image result for Jr. achievement I hope your children came home and told you all about our lessons with the Junior Achievement volunteer, Mr. Stoll, every day this week.  We learned about production, goods and services, commerce, and voting. Today the students went home with a Jr. Achievement certificate and string backpack provided by Mr. Stoll.  The lessons were fun and informational.

The week's events:
Reading: We worked on main idea and details this week.  Main idea has proved to be a difficult concept for some so we will continue working on it next week.  We also started to explore a fun new app on the ipads called Puppet Theater. Image result for puppet theater app for ipad
The students are looking forward to writing and recording their own plays using this app.

Math: The students are doing great learning how to tell time.  The hard part is learning all of the different names for the same time (8:15= quarter after 8=  15 minutes after 8).  It gets confusing! :-)

The second grade joined the rest of the school today in honoring Jared Forsyth, the police officer from Lockport who lost his life while on duty.  We stood in front of the school as the funeral procession went by.  It was obviously appreciated, as many people rolled their windows down and waved to the children.

Important dates:
April 18- Father/daughter dance
May 11- book report due




Friday, April 10, 2015

Sorry, I must have left the cord for my camera at school, so I cannot upload the photos I took this week.  Here is a brief rundown of what we did:

Reading: The reading selections this week were various plays which we used to discuss problems and solutions in stories

Writing: We just finished the graphic organizer for our next writing assignment.  Each student is writing his/her own book entitled The Best School Day Ever.  The students write what they would plan if they were the teacher.  When the books are done we will vote on the ideas and plan a day to implement them.

Math: We finished up our money chapter.  This week our centers were coin counting practice with various games and websites.   Next week we start working on telling time.

Religion: We are learning about the parts of Mass.

Science: We had fun learning about making maple syrup.  We even had a taste test with sap and syrup.  Ask your child what he/she thought of tasting the sap. 

 Thank you to everyone who dressed down for Autism Awareness today.  We had 100% participation!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Important Dates:
 4/13-4/20- A volunteer will be in to teach a lesson every day this week.
4/14- HSA meeting and deadline for book club orders