Week of Sept. 2

     The students have been working really hard.  Last week we spent some time in the Ipad lab and became paleontologists in the Innovation Lab.

     This week we will have a religion test on creation and begin looking at how God sent his only son, Jesus to us.

     We will continue working in our Welcome Back Superkids book.  Students will read more stories in our book, as well as continue working on blending sounds.  We will also talk about exclamation marks and question marks.  In writing students will continue working on coming up with ideas.  We will learn about making lists.

     In math we will be having a math test this week.  We will also begin looking at the problem solving process, as well as some, some more problems, ordinal numbers, and triangles.

     Science this week, we will be continuing to study our dinosaurs.  We will be looking at different features of dinosaurs and how they might be similar to animals alive today.  This week during our Innovation Lab students will begin investigating magnets and items that are attracted to magnets.

Upcoming Events this week:

• Labor Day - No School - Monday, Sept. 2
• Picture Day - Wednesday, Sept. 4
• Early Dismissal - Wednesday, Sept. 4 at 2:00
• Back to School Night - Thursday, Sept. 5 at 6:30pm

Welcome Back

Welcome back!  I look forward to a great year.

So far we have been working a lot on rules and procedures of the classroom.  We started working on our first Superkids book, Welcome Back, which we review skills from kindergarten and introduce some new stories for us to read.  In math we have already been using our pattern blocks, linking cubes, and have played some math games.

This week we will be learning about:

• Creation
• Sides and Angles of Shapes
• Bar Graphs
• Vowels and Consonants
• Blending Sounds
• Dinosaurs

Summer

     Thank you for a great year!  I hope that everyone has a great summer vacation.  See you next year!

Week of June 3

     This is the last week of school and it will be a busy one, but a fun one.  Below is the schedule of things going on this week:

     Monday:  Field Trip permission forms due, Reading Test, Ice cream during lunch

     Wednesday:  Wilson Park and Baskin Robbins field trip, students wear gym uniforms

     Thursday:  dress down, cleaning day, students may bring items to play with at recess

     Friday:  last day of school, students dress up for mass, 8:15 mass, 10:30 dismissal

    
     In religion we have been talking about the Eucharist and this week finish talking about the mass.

     Last week we finished our last unit of More Adventures of the Superkids.  Monday, June 3 we will have our end of the level reading test.  Students wrote about their favorite story last week and this week we will be writing about things we learned this year.  We will be reviewing what we have learned this whole year through some games.

     In math students learned last week about fact families and this week we will review fact families as well as time, money, and place value.  We will be reviewing by looking at different SMARTboard activities, using our Ipads, and playing other games.

     In Science students will be finishing up their animal reports that they have been working on as well as playing a habitat interactive game.  Students also had fun last week playing a predator/prey game so we will also review by playing our game again.

     This week students will also be working on memory books and making advice books for next year's incoming first graders.

Week of May 20

     This week we will be having a math test on Wednesday, May 22.  We will also have our unit 9 spelling test on Thursday, May 23.  Spelling homework is also due on Thursday.

     In religion this week we are continuing to talk about the sacraments, focusing now on Reconciliation and God's forgiveness.  We will also talk about how the choices we make can show our love for God and how to be a peacemaker.  Our family mass is on Sunday, May 26 at 9:30.  Students that are reading at the mass will be practicing this week.

     We have started out last book in More Adventures of the Superkids.  In unit 9 students will be working on the oo sound as in spooky and the oo as in look.  They will also continue to work on problem/solution stories, summarizing, sequencing events, and recalling details of a story.

     For Math this week students will be working more on subtraction facts, identifying events as certain, likely, or unlikely, problem solving strategies, and identifying hundreds, tens, and ones.  We will be continuing to use our interactive math games on the SMARTboard as well as practice math on our Ipads.

     In Science this week students will be learning about life cycles of plants and animals.  We will be comparing different life cycles and students will draw the life cycle of the animal that they have chosen to write about. 

Week of May 13

     Happy Mother's Day to all the moms!

     This week we will be learning more about Baptism, the signs and symbols of Baptism and what the signs and symbols mean. 

     For superkids this week we will be finishing up unit 8 and having our spelling test on Wednesday, May 15.  We will also have a reading test on Thursday, May 16 that will cover units 7 and 8, along with reading comprehension and a writing part.  Students are also working on planning their characters, a problem, and a solution to go along with their setting that they worked on last week. 

     During Math this week we will be working on identifying and counting quarters, subtracting 2-digit numbers without regrouping, reading a thermometer, and identifying more geometric solids.  We will also be having a math test on Monday, May 13.

     In Science we are working on our Creature Feature inquiry unit.  Last week students began identifying different features that animals have that help them to survive.  They then drew their own animal taking features from different animals to create a new animal.  This week they will work on writing about how these features would help their animal to grow and survive.  We will also continue talking about features of animals and plants, classifying animals as mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, or birds.  Each student will also be selecting an animal to write about.  In our science lab this week we will be erupting our volcanoes that the kids worked on building last week in lab.

     For Social Studies, the students will be helping to add the captions to the pictures for our community scrapbook.

Week of May 6

     This week we will be talking about Mary and the rosary during religion class.  May Crowning will be on Wednesday, May 8 during our school mass.  The students need to bring in a flower and a rosary.  We will also be talking about the sacraments.

     In Superkids the students will be working on ou/ow words and rhyming words.  They will also be planning a setting for a story.  We will be reading another one of our Super-Duper magazines, this time about nightlife and jobs that people do at night.

     For Math this week students will be learning about polygons using our ipads.  We will also be focusing on subtraction facts this week.

     Last week the students had lots of fun with the worms.  This week we will be starting our next inquiry unit creature features.  We will also begin constructing volcanoes in lab.

     In Social Studies this week we are going to be putting together a community scrapbook.  Please send in the pictures of places in our community.

     Our plants are also starting to grow!