Finally... It's March, Spring Must Be Just Around the Corner!

We started off our day with a Scavenger Hunt.  I put clues around the school and the students had to answer questions at each stop before they earned a small prize at the end.  Scavenger Hunts are such a fun way to practice reading!

Flat Stanley reports have started coming in.  He visited Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rome, Italy; and Florida so far.  In Italy he traveled with a group of priests and brothers to the Vatican.  They even made a Flat Stanley dressed like a priest to travel with our Flat Stanley!  We have enjoyed letters and photos from each of those places.  The recipients have had such fun with Stanley and have sent us very detailed reports of landmarks and sites that Stanley has visited.  What a fun way to learn about different countries and states!

Stanley and friends in Rome, Italy.

Stanley traveled to Florida and ran into a friend from DeSales!!

We have just finished our month with author Robert Munsch.  In the Listening Center this student enjoys his book, Makeup Mess

We've started working on telling time.  This student uses a "flip board" to practice time and then flips it over to check his answers.

One of our centers this week was a drawing center.  Students have to read and follow the directions to draw the picture. 

This student practice time with a clock.

Mathlines is always a popular center.  The student beat the clock by finding addends of ten before the time ran out.  It is a great way to practice math facts.  You can find a link under "Educational Links" on this blog. 

 

Other News:
Reading: we worked on prediction and listened to author Cynthia Cotten tell us about writing.
 Religion: learned about Confirmation and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit
SS: read about American Symbols
Science: learned about matter (ask your child about solids, liquids, and gases)
 Math:  triple digit subtraction!!

Important Dates:
3/11- Generation Celebration- please email me with the names of guests that are coming.  We want to write a thank you to them. 
3/13- 1/2 day for students

100 Day Hooray!

     On Thursday we celebrated the 100th Day of School!  With all of the snow days, the date had to be pushed back several times but we finally got there.

Each group of students were given 100 items and 8 minutes to build something with them.  It was wonderful practice at working together in a group and problem solving!  This group had 100 Legos.

This group used 100 unifix cubes.

Here they are using 100 mixed items: blocks, dominoes, etc.

This group had fun using 100 pattern blocks.

This shows about half of the list we made of 100 things we've learned so far in school. We could have gone on, and on, and on....

 

Locker Art:  the next photos show the pennants we made that say we are 100 days smarter!  We also made rainbow pots of gold for St. Patrick's Day.  (Ask your child what ROY G BIV means :-) Each child wrote something that they would buy for someone else with their pot of gold.

With all of the white stuff outside, it's nice to see color on the walls!

We shared some of the adventures that we had with Flat Stanley over the vacation.  He visited Florida, went to jail, went to farms, had a pool party with friends, went to a basketball game, and many, many more things.  We had such fun listening to each classmate read some of his/her journal.  I am always thrilled by the excitement this project generates.  The bulletin board pictured above is ready for the Flat Stanleys that are being sent back to us.  We will mark all of the places they have been.  I've been told that Stanley has even done some international travel!  I will keep you posted.

Remember our evaporation experiment?  All of the water had evaporated by the time we returned from Winter Break.

Each Friday Mrs. B comes in to talk to us about conflict resolution, being our best, and talking about our feelings.  It is a wonderful way to end our week. 

 Other lessons:
Math: We finished triple digit addition and now we are moving on to triple digit subtraction.  Some of the students are even getting excited about that Mental Math that frustrates some parents so!  We also had fun with Miss Agostini's class when we got together for Math Club.
SS: This month we learned about some famous African Americans
ELA: This week we read descriptions in our reading text and tried to write our own.  We also worked on irregular past tense verbs and  read books and reader's theater for the 100th day.

Important Dates:
Monday, 3/2- PARP kick off- wear PJ's to school!
Thursday, 3/5- Family Reading Night- I will running some activities there along with other teachers and parents.   I hope to see everyone!  Author Cynthia Cotten will be visiting us that day to talk to the children. Check out her link to learn more about her: http://cynthiacotten.com/
 

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Another day off due to weather.  I know the students are excited but it makes it difficult to get things done!  Save those valentines!  We will have our party on the Monday we get back- the 23rd.  Be sure to send Flat Stanley back as well with the journal partially filled out. 
We will not make up the reading test that was missed on Friday. See the vocab/spelling pages for the new words for the week we get back.
This week's skills and concepts:
Reading: cause and effect and helping verbs; we also started a new Flat Stanley book and read books by the author who will be visiting DeSales in March, Cynthia Cotten.  Click on this link to find more about her: cotten
Math : the students are doing great with mental math and adding three digit numbers.  It's all starting to fit together!
Religion: We concentrated on Baptism this week.  The children read aloud their Baptism interviews.  We talked about the celebrations that welcomed them into their churches.
 Science: we learned about Arctic animals and set up an evaporation experiment, see below.

In less than a week about 1/2 cup evaporated!

 We also used the scientific process to learn whether mittens are warm.
Everyone hypothesized that mittens are warm but the experiment showed us that it is not the mitten, but the hand inside the mitten that generates heat.

Enjoy the Winter Break!

Important Dates:
2/23- Flat Stanley, journal, stamps, and address due  back to school
and Valentine party
2/25- Mass 9:40 
3/5- Family Reading Night at DeSales

Flat Stanley!

 

We have had a fun week reading about Flat Stanley's adventures and answering comprehension questions.  Each student made his/her own Stanley which we will be mailing to a friend or relative.  I will be reading another Flat Stanley adventure this week and at the end of the week Stanley will come home with a journal.  Your child can write in the journal about adventures that he/she has with Flat Stanley during the winter break.  Please be sure to send both the journal and Stanley back to school so we can mail them out.  
    

     This week we used the ipads to write a digital story about a snow adventure.  Everyone who was in school on Friday was able to record the story and I emailed your child's story to you.  If you did not receive it please let me know.  If your child absent on Friday we will record the story next week.

    In Math we once again worked with mental math.   I know it is difficult to get through but it really does make sense.  As with anything new, it takes a lot of practice.  The third grade teachers assure me that an introduction to mental math in second grade makes it a little easier when they have to use it in third grade.  I do know the students think it's great to add 100 or 10 to a number without having to write it down!
      In Science we continue to learn about weather and the water cycle.  In SS we learned more about using a map and started discussing Presidents Lincoln and Washington.
    In Religion we are learning about the 7 sacraments.  A Baptism interview sheet was sent home.  Please have it completed and sent back in by Monday.

 We have been getting a lot of great questions to our answer; "Under the bed".  Examples: Where does my dog hide?, Where do I put my smelly socks?  If you have not sent your questions back yet, please do.  We enjoy listening to the questions and calling out the answer- Under the bed!

One of my students brought in her first sewing project that she made on her sewing machine.  I thought she did a great job and wanted to share it. :-)

     Special Dates:
2/11- Mass at 9:40
2/12- stamps and address for Flat Stanley due
2/13- Last Mass with Fr. Vatter, Valentine party 
Note: Due to the cold I was only able to take the students out for one day in the last few weeks.  They SO enjoyed it!  If the temperature and wind chill are above 20 degrees we do go out.  Please make sure your child is prepared with snow pants, boots, mittens, and a hat.  Thanks! 

Catholic School Spirit!

What a fun week.  I meant to take photos every day but I only managed to take it on Tacky Tuesday.  The kids loved wearing their clothes backwards and mismatched.

I asked the students what their favorite act was from St Mary's music assembly and most of them said it was the boy who did beatboxing.  (That's where you make sounds with your mouth)  So when we came back to the room I played the Dynamite song for them performed by one person using only his mouth for instrument sounds  They liked it so much it turned into a dance party.  Here's the link: Dynamite

Today was our pep rally.  The kids cheered, sang, danced, and participated in a relay race.  Thanks for the extra photos Mrs. Rahill!

Sweatshirt Relay Race

Of course we did do school work as well. :-)  We learned more about weather, compared numbers with <, >,=, learned to compare and contrast, and sharpened our map skills.  We also added to our hallway timeline. 

Next week we will not use the reading series, therefore we have no vocabulary or spelling words.  We will be reading and discussing Flat Stanley .  You can look forward to Stanley coming home before the winter break so your child can have adventures with him and write about them in a special journal.

Important dates:
1/30, 1/31- DeSales musical at the Palace- I went last night- it was wonderful!
2/6- Candy orders due 

Catholic Schools Week

The coming week will be full of fun activities to celebrate Catholic Schools Week.  Be sure to pay attention to the blue sheet that was sent home so your child doesn't miss out on all of the dress down opportunities.  There is one change on the sheet- the Monday Prayer Service is at 8:30, not 9:40 as stated.

This past week we were very busy in all of our subjects:

Reading: identified cause and effect, enjoyed more books by our Author of the Month- Jan Brett, and practiced combining sentences with the word "and".
Writing: we finally finished our digital opinion piece about the best pet to have.  The students learned how to use MS Word to type.  They had fun using the Word Art and pasting a picture from a google search.
 Math: we worked with expanded form and learned to read and write numerals in different ways.
Science: continued learning about weather by predicting and recording the weather and then used our data to draw conclusions and observations.
SS: used map coordinates to find points of interest on a map
Religion: learned more about the 7 Sacraments.
Cooking: in our monthly "cooking" lesson we learned to make Rice Krispie Treats. 

Enjoying our treats.

Special Dates: 1/26- Prayer Service at 8:30, Wear PJ's to school, collections for SPCA begin
1/27 - Wear clothes that clash, music assembly
1/28- crazy hat day, 9:40 Mass, ice cream at lunch, Pizza served for snack from Dr. Fike
1/29-Wear clothes from 70's and 80's, SPCA presentation
1/30- Pep Rally, wear sports uniforms or PE uniforms

Thank you MLK Jr!

In SS this week we read and wrote about MLK Jr.  After learning about his "I Have a Dream" speech, each student wrote about their own dreams that would make the future a better place.  Our students dream of a world without litter, bullying, killing, or drugs.  Sounds like a great dream.

This is our door for January.

We are published!  We were so excited to receive our shipment of books.  We took the time for each student to read his/her own page to the class.  The books went home with the students on Thursday.  I hope you enjoyed reading about everyone's traditions.  If you did not order the book but would still like to, I sent home a flier with instructions on ordering directly from the publisher.

In L.A. we have been identifying the author's purpose for writing the stories we are reading (P for persuade, I for inform, and E for entertain).  On Friday the students started making their own Author's Purpose pies.  Next time you are reading together, see if your child can tell you what the author's purpose is.

Our unit in Science is weather.  We made models of three kinds of clouds- cumulus, cirrus, and stratus.  If you would like to see the Prezi I made to go along with this unit, click on link.   Weather Prezi

In Math we are working on expanded form.  ( 462= 400+60+2)   We used these cups to help us practice.  They are easy to make using Styrofoam cups.  To use, first turn the cups so they are at the number you want.  Then open the cups to see the expanded form of the number.  (see below)

These are the New Year's resolutions we started last week.

Special Dates:
1/17-1/18- Speakers will be at all area Masses to talk about DeSales.  Please have your child wear his/her uniform to Mass.
1/19- No school for MLK Jr. 

A Two Day Work Week!

We obviously didn't get a lot done this week, but there are a few things I'd like to share with you.

I saw this on Pinterest and had to try it.  The students thought it was very cool and wanted me to post the instructions: put a few drops of food coloring in a balloon and then fill it with water and tie it up.  Freeze it and then pull the balloon off.  Each ice ball will probably look different.  I asked DeSales' science teacher, Mr. Welt, why it looks like this and he explained that the outside froze very quickly and pushed all of the air bubbles to the inside to make the blue "tree" shape.  If anyone tries it at home I would be happy to post your results.

 

 ELA: On Monday we took some time to sit in a circle, nibble on candy canes, and we each told about something from Christmas break.  It was a nice way to start back and give everyone a chance to speak.  We also started writing about out New Year's resolutions.  We will finish that up next week. 
Math: We reviewed for the chapter 4 test and the review sheets were sent home.  The test is postponed until Monday.

We will not try to make up last week's reading or spelling test.  Since we have a test every week, I have enough assessments to use for grading purposes and it doesn't make sense to try to squeeze in the test.
Important Dates:
1/12 and 1/13- STAR testing- please be sure your child has enough sleep and a good breakfast
1/14- Mass- 9:40
Enjoy the (long) weekend!