Halloween Highlights

Halloween was lots of fun! The students loved dressing up in their costumes and having a pizza party in our classroom. Thank you to all of the families who donated treats to make this such a special day. We especially loved The Haunted Gym and the Halloween activities with our third grade friends. We played Halloween Bingo with candy corns, danced to the Monster Mash, made tootsie roll ghost pops and enjoyed a Halloween book and song.

 

Our seeds are planted!

Science

We began our first science unit called Plants and Pollination a few weeks ago. Our “little scientists” have been very busy and actively engaged. We started by examining “What We Know About Plants” and “What We are Wondering About Plants”. We then made observations of a dried bean which we soaked overnight and observed what changes occurred the following day. This soaking allowed us to peel off the seed coat and see what was inside the seed. We then planted our Wisconsin Fast Plant seeds and put them under the lights. Ask your child about this process.

It has been very exciting to see the daily growth of our Wisconsin Fast Plants. We completed the process of thinning our plants to give them the best chance to grow. We have been recording the changes in size and the number of leaves. Then we make a detailed, labeled drawing in our books. We are learning the parts of the flower.

The Schwest Run

The Schwest Run was a huge success even though the weather was a little chilly! We all did our personal best and contributed to our healthy hearts.  What a fun afternoon cheering on our Westmere classmates and friends! 

Where in the World Am I?

Social Studies

We have been exploring maps and globes and reviewing the continents and oceans. We read a book Where Do I live? and it helped us see the difference between our planet, continent, country, state, city and town. The students enjoyed showing their knowledge by making a flip book. These are displayed on our "paws"itively great work bulletin board in the classroom. Your child should be able to recall these important facts. Try going over this information often at home too. We will now focus our attention on North America and more specifically to the United States with further discussion of U.S. symbols and examination of the three branches of our government.

Math Mania

Fun Friday Math Centers have been a huge success! The kids enjoy the hands on practice with the math skills. We have been reinforcing fact fluency with Reflex Math and egg carton math. In addition, we are working on place value, estimating and adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers with regrouping. Please be sure that your child is going on Reflex Math at home also at least 3 times a week. It will make a huge difference and the best part is that is is independent and fun!

Reading and Writing Routines

Reading

We began Reading Workshop with enthusiasm and dedication. I was thrilled to see how motivated the students were to choose books from our classroom library. Each student has his/her “book bin” filled with interesting books, a Reader’s Notebook to record books read and a Reader Response Journal for literature responses.  Our mini-lessons have focused on how the classroom library is organized, how to choose the “just right” book and why we choose certain books. We have also explored word analysis strategies and the importance of reading a variety of genres. Be sure to ask your child to explain the different genres to you. The students made bookmarks and enjoy reading on our rug squares and conferencing with me. 

We also finished our first read aloud called Donavan’s Word Jar. Here we are going on a Word Hunt around the school and recording interesting words in word jars in our Writer's Notebooks. We are finding fascinating words during Reading Workshop too and writing them on little pieces of paper for our own classroom word jar. In addition, we wrote our first whole class reader response entry to this read aloud. We learned the power of words and how they can change us! This inspired us to decorate Our Word Study Notebooks with lots and lots of words to help us prepare for a year of discovering patterns in words.

Writing

Writing Workshop began with the students reflecting on some memorable summer events. We decorated our Writer’s Notebook covers and are sharing them with our classmates as our first star student activity. The students also wrote bio-poems about themselves. We published and shared as a class and they are hanging up in our room. It was a fun way to get to know each other better.