We continued our weather unit this week by learning about the elements that make up weather (wind, heat, pressure, and precipitation) and how they are measured. We also started an evaporation experiment.  We put water in 2 cups and covered one with a baggie.  Ask your child which cup is evaporating faster.

     Thank you to one of our parents who is a Reading Specialist and came in to do a lesson with the students.  She read and discussed with us a folktale  called The Fisherman and His Wife. 

There were wonderful illustrations displayed on the white board that went along with the story.

The students discuss aspects of the folktale with each other.

Our presenter and her daughter!  The students in the background are working on sequencing the story.  I hope they used the illustrations to tell you the story after school.                             Next week is Catholic Schools week.  Please follow the schedule for the dress down days.  We will not use the reading series that week but we will be starting our Flat Stanley unit.  Look for more information coming home.

Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful...

We have had some fun this week learning about weather.  I put a Prezi together that you may be able to view on your computer.  If not, I am also putting the links that we used this week to learn about the water cycle and clouds. 
 Weather Prezi

 Water Cycle Video on youtube 

Water Cycle Song 

3 Types of Clouds 

Below are the  cloud pictures the students made.  We learned about cumulus, cirrus, and stratus clouds.  When the class came in from recess on Friday they told me there were stratus clouds in the sky!

We also spent time this week learning about MLK Jr. through books, our Scholastic News, and videos.  Each student wrote about his/her own dream for the future.  I think the writings show a lot of compassion and consideration for other people and animals.

Fun Friday was filled with fabulous activities to reinforce what we learned this week. (Ask your child why that phrase is called alliteration!)

We are playing a dice game to practice our place value skills to 1000!

We are listening to Country Mouse, City Mouse by Jan Brett, our Author of the Month.

We are reading a poem and identifying the rhyming words.

This center is where we made the cloud pictures.

The ipad center is a favorite- everyone can choose their own program to play.

Every Friday we make a book for the Star Student to take home.  We like to write nice things about our classmates.

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Sometimes the teacher takes a break and lets one of the students take over. :-)  Here we are listening to a Clifford book from the Scholastic Storia program.  A student is running the interactive program and calling other students up to participate.  Check out the Scholastic website to download your own free Storia account for your computer.               I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend.  We sure have had a lot of days off recently, haven't we?

 

Snow Days!

     It was a short but productive week!  We managed to get almost all of the digital stories done that we've been working on for weeks.  Most of you should have received the digital story by email but there were a few technical glitches which I will try to work out this week.  I hope you enjoyed them, it was a fun process.  The students especially enjoyed hearing their recording of the story.  I can't cut and paste an example for you but if you go to the link below you can view one of the stories.  A snow story
Be sure to click on the speaker icon so you can hear the story read. 

      This week we'll be reading and writing about MLK Jr. and continuing our unit on weather.  

    The last week in January is Catholic Schools Week.  It is a spirit-filled week that ends in a pep rally.  We will not follow the regular reading series but we will be working on lots of reading and writing.  I have a few guest presenters lined up for that week so it should be fun.