Week of January 28

     This week is Catholic Schools Week and we will be doing various activities to celebrate catholic schools, our students, parents, and reaching out to the community around us.  The following is our schedule of activities for this week:

• Monday: Teacher Appreciation and Buddy Day - Students will get together with their 7th grade buddies
• Tuesday: Spirit Day and Making Cards - Students will make get well cards for the sick
• Wednesday: Parent Appreciation Day - Parents are invited to join us for 8:15 mass and then enjoy a breakfast
• Thursday: Spirit Day and Bowling - We will be going bowling in the morning
• Friday: Dress Down Day and Student Appreciation and Games - Students may bring a game from home to play in the afternoon.  

     In religion this week we will talk about how Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to us.

     In Superkids this week we will be working with contractions and compound words.  We will be doing various activities using the Smartboard as well as other hands on things in order to learn how to spell these words as well as review our other word patterns.  Students will also continue with the writing process and begin the next steps of drafting and revising their problem/solution stories that they planned last week.

     In Math this week we will be working more with the doubles plus one facts as well as adding two digit numbers without regrouping.  We will be using our Smart board doing our daily fact practice to help challenge us to remember the answers quicker each time helping us to become more fluent with our facts.

     For Science and Social Studies we are continuing with our Penguin theme unit.  This week we will be talking about what penguins eat, predators, how they move, penguin chicks, and how they care for their babies.  Students will be continuing to read our penguin books and we will be adding to our penguin books.  We will also be doing some interactive activities using our Smart board to aid us in our learning.

     What we will be learning about in the next couple of weeks:

• Groundhog Day
• 100th Day
• Magnets
• Solar System
• Compound Words
• Time to the Half Hour
• Congruent Shapes
• Communities
• Ash Wednesday and Lent

Open House

     Plan on joining us for the kickoff to Catholic Schools Week by attending 9:30 mass on Sunday, Jan. 27.  Then come on over to school for our open house.  Students attending both mass and open house will be able to dress down on Monday.

     Hope to see everyone!

Week of January 21

     Monday, we will not have any school in observance of Martin Luther King Jr.  We talked about who Martin Luther King Jr. was on Friday with our Scholastic News and watched two short videos about his life.  We will do some other activities on Tuesday having to do with Martin Luther King Jr.

     We will also be talking about the Presidential Inauguration this week and read through our Scholastic News dealing with the Inauguration.  The students will also be able to see some short videos again through our Scholastic News digital issues.

     In Superkids, students began learning about CVVC (consonant, vowel, vowel, consonant) words.  We learned the rule for when two vowels are together that the first one is long and says it's name and the second one is silent.  I also taught them the saying to help them remember the rule, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking."  We also reviewed the other rules that we have been learning.
     This week, students will continue practicing decoding and encoding CVVC words.  We will also sequence events from the story "The Straw Horse" that we read in our readers.  Students will also be working on learning about adjectives and using adjectives to help plan a story character.  We will be using our story characters to write a problem/solution story.  We will also read a play in class titled, "The Contest."

     In math, we will be working on estimating and measuring area using nonstandard units and doubles plus one facts.  We will be using our linking cubes to help in learning these facts.

     In Science this week we will be continuing to talk about Penguins.  At the end of last week, we once again broke away from our science books so that we could start learning about Penguins.  Students began by telling what they already know about penguins and putting this information up on a giant penguin that I drew.  Then they broke up into groups to look through some penguin books to find out some new information that they did not know about penguins already.  The students wrote down what they found and added it to another giant penguin that lists all of the new information.  The kids were super excited.
     This week we will begin our continuation of penguins by doing a science experiment.  We will talk about how penguins and other polar animals keep warm.  Then students will explore how blubber helps to keep penguins warm by sticking their hand in a blubber glove and then putting it into ice cold water.  Throughout the week we will also be doing various other hands on activities such as measuring our heights and comparing them to the heights of different penguins and exploring how penguins move and how they keep their eggs warm.

Looking ahead:

• Magnets                                                                    
• Contractions and Compound Words
• Solar System
• Adding two digit numbers without regrouping
• 100th Day
• Groundhog's Day
• Communities Inquiry Unit

Week of January 14

     Monday will be our spelling test for unit 8.  Spelling homework is also due on Monday.  We will also be having a reading test on units 7 and 8 on Tuesday.  The test will cover the pattern and memory words from units 7 and 8, reading a story and answering comprehension questions, and a writing part.

     This week in religion we will be talking about ways we can become better followers of Jesus.  We will also talk about ways that Jesus shows his love for us.

     In reading this week the students will learn about writing sentences about a main idea as well as look at how to plan out a story character and the setting of stories.  We will also be continuing to work on decoding short and long vowel words.  In unit 9 we will add CVVC (consonant, vowel, vowel, consonant) words.  The students have already learned about nouns and verbs, now we will also talk about adjectives as well as review nouns and verbs.

     In math this week students will be using rulers to draw line segments.  We will also begin talking about adding 2 digit numbers using dimes and pennies.

     In science we are going to be talking about forces.  We will also work on measuring how far objects move when we put a force on them such as pushing them.  Our science lab will be dealing with this concept also.  Students will be painting their race cars on Monday and then during our science lab we will race the cars that we painted with and without using a ramp and discuss the results. 

     We are also going to be starting our Penguin theme unit.  During the unit students will be able to compare their height to the heights of different types of penguins, compare and contrast penguins to other birds, look at where penguins live, as well as do a blubber experiment to find out how penguins, as well as some other animals, stay warm in the cold.

Science Labs

     I have added a new page to the blog titled Science Labs.  I will update this page with the labs that we are doing each week so that everyone will be able to see more information about the labs.  Make sure to check it out and talk with your children too about the labs.  Today's lab was finding out if heat made a difference when mixing food coloring and water.

Week of Jan. 7

     Happy New Year!  I hope that everyone had a nice break.  This week we will be getting back into our classroom routines. 

     In religion we will begin by talking about Christmas and the feast of the Three Kings.  Then we will be looking at hot Jesus loves and cares for us.  We will read the story of the Good Shepherd from the Bible, compare Jesus and shepherds, as well as look at ways that we can praise Jesus.

     In Superkids, this week, we will be starting Unit 8 of Adventures of the Superkids.  The students will be working more with short and long vowel sounds.  They will also learn the rules for adding -ing and -ed to CVCe words.  We will also work on revising our problem/solution stories that we wrote before break.  The students will also be working more with identifying the beginning, middle, and end of a story and sequencing events.  We will be reading the story "The Mitten" by Jan Brett in class this week and the students will be making their own mittens with the animals to put inside so that they can retell the story.  Look for these to be coming home with your child this week.

     In math we will be dividing squares in half, counting by 5's, using tally marks, and drawing a picture to solve a problem.  We will also work on subtracting 2 from a number.  Starting this week, students will also be responsible for completing a daily math word problem.  It will be part of our morning work when the students come in along with our daily handwriting practice.  On Friday, Jan. 11, we will have a math test.

     In Science we will be talking about what happens to matter when heat is added or taken away.  During out lab time students will do an experiment involving warm and cold water and food coloring.  They will make predictions about what they think will happen and then do the investigation to find out if they were right or not.  We will end the week by beginning to look at forces in preparation for our science lab next week which will involve racing cars.