April 27, 2018

Hello parents and guardians,

This week students have been very excited as we dive into mapping activities in Social Studies. We mapped our classrooms separately then put them together.

We borrowed many globes from around the school and looked at various world maps on the Smart board.  We talked about the difference between 2D and 3D maps of the world.  Ask your child the difference between the two.  

In Literacy this week we practiced our new words of the week by completing a cloze (fill in the blank) activity about visiting the new pandas at the zoo.

We did a "making words" lesson which culminated with the mystery word, "chapters".

Our new words for next week are:

• after
• friend
• give
• quit
• talk

Our story of the week was called The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss.  Children listened to the story read aloud twice over two days, and were then asked to create storyboards to demonstrate their comprehension.  Here are a few pictures:

In Math this week we have been teaching various strategies the children can use when subtracting one number from another.  The children learned that subtraction means you are taking something away and that whatever is left is smaller than what you started with.  First, we talked about how to use a number line to find the solution if needed, however we are hoping to get the children to begin using more mental math strategies.  One strategy, when subtracting 1, 2 or 3 from a number is to count backwards in ones head.  Another strategy is to use addition to find the solution by counting up from the smaller number. 

We also did a very tricky word problem.  Ask your child how he/she solved it.

We were so excited by the beautiful weather that finally arrived this week.  We think that Spring is finally here!  For Science, we did an early Spring walk to observe changes that have occurred in the natural environment.  We ended up finding a lot more than we bargained for.  The children discovered two ladybug nests and just happened to be there when they were coming out from their Winter hibernation.  There were ladybugs everywhere!

We hope you all had a wonderful Earth Day!

Ms. Cvach
Mrs. Kenna