It's amazing how fast this year has flown! This last month is packed with activities. Please review the handout in the Friday Folders today to see notes about upcoming events.
This week in the classroom, we started to explore geometry in math by making shapes out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Kids loved this activity! This is a great activity to do at home if you're looking for something different for your child to do on a rainy day. We also learned a new math game. Kids worked in pairs and took turns rolling two dice. The child with the larger number got a marker. We practiced adding all the dots together, and also saying the number on one dice and adding the dots on the other to this number. For example, a child rolled a 3 and a 6. They say the bigger number then add the dots to this number. "6...7,8,9."
In reading, we have been looking closely at digraphs and vowel teams. When you see words at home that have these parts in words. We have also been talking about the endings of words like ing and r controlled vowels.
Writing this week we did a cold prompt on the topic butterfly. Kids had to write a descriptive piece about butterflies without teacher or friend assistance. This was very hard for the kids but they all did a nice job tapping out words. When they write at home, have them write words by putting a letter for every sound they hear. It actually helps them more to do this than to just tell them the spelling or to have them correct all the spelling mistakes they make when they sound out a word. Of course, sight words and words you can't easily tap out you can help them on if they get frustrated.
We still have many kids missing permission slips and money for the zoo! Our trip to the zoo is on May 16th, so get those in ASAP!
