Friday Is Our Favorite Day!

Happy Weekend, Everyone!

Once again, this week flew by! There are just 14 more school days left and the month of May will be action packed!

We had a busy week learning about measurement, Eric Carle & Shel Silverstein, contractions, trouble shooting & problem solving and the character pillars of caring and respect. In math we did an in depth study of linear and capacity/volume measurements. Kids - be sure to tell your parents about our macaroni experiments and what you learned about cylinders.

We moved on to the essay portion of our Eric Carle author study. We will combine our daily writings from the book study into one five paragraph essay. The kids are learning to use their notes from each day to create one piece of writing.

We began our author study of Shel Silverstein this week. We are learning about the writing traits of word choice and voice and how they help convey meaning in a poem. We read Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out to learn about the importance of using "juicy words" in writing. Parents - ask your child to tell you a sentence with lots of juicy words!

We continue to study contractions and I am excited to see the children using them in their writing! Kids - you're doing a great job with your contractions! It's great to see! You'll be contraction experts in no time!!! (Get it?!?)

We had quite an adventure in the computer lab today! I went over to the lab before class and created some problems with the computers! When the kids got there, they found out that computers were off, monitors wouldn't come on and the mice wouldn't work! When the kids tried to log in, they immediately turned to me and they were greeted with the response, "Problem Solve!" It was so exciting to try to watch the kids to figure the problems out on their own. We learned about the importance of problem solving. Kids - be sure to tell your parents what you did today and what you learned.

We studied the character pillars of caring and respect and we focused on demonstrating them both in and out of our classroom. We spent a few minutes each day writing positive notes to each other. The kids came home today with a bag of notes from everyone in the class and from me. The kids really enjoyed this exercise!

A big THANK YOU to the 5 children who correctly answered all the questions on my blog this week. I hope you enjoy your prizes! :) This week 5/25 children participated; next week I hope that 25/25 (or 1 WHOLE class) will be up for the challenge. Be sure to check my blog early in the week and see if you can answer all the questions.

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Johnston