Mrs. Ball's Weekly Update
May 1, 2016
Happy Mother's Day!
May is the month in which we choose to honor our mothers. We will celebrate on Friday, May 6th at 2:30 with a tea party put on by your adoring children. We hope you will be able to make it!
We are moving from exploring the natural habitats of Washington to a controlled, student designed working farm! Each child will have the opportunity to create a paper model of a small family farm, using "farm bucks" to purchase cutouts of farm buildings, animals, and machinery, along with land squares for pastures and building areas. The model-making phase of the unit takes 2-3 weeks including numerous opportunities for reading, writing and research. The mathematics they use to carry out this project involves place value and money, area and perimeter, mapping and computation. Toward the end of the unit, we will introduce two final projects - a number pattern that grows by 4's, and a collection of farm animal story problems. The science component of this unit will involve the study of plants and our STEM project where students will design their own hand pollinators. The children will also we creating a poem book entitled, "Down on the Farm." The unit will conclude with a field trip to Swan's Trail Farm in June and a Farm
Fair where much like our Penguin Parade, students will share their learning with you.