Beech Class
Week of April 4
Important Dates and Reminders
- Monday, 4/11 - Field trip to the Battery Urban Farm - POSTPONED due to a scheduling glitch. We will do our best to reschedule. If we are not able to reschedule, we will plan an equivalent/similar trip.
Brooklyn Grange Trip
- We learned all about honey bees and pollination.
- We dug around in a very healthy worm bin!
- We planted seeds.
- We tasted lemon sorrel.
- We learned the steps to three new dances--the plant dance, the worm dance, and the compost dance.
Reading - Making Connections
At home: Read nonfiction books/magazines/look at pictures in newspapers. Ask your child, "What did you learn from nonfiction books this week?" "What did you choose to read about?" "Did you make any connections?" "What kind of nonfiction books do you like the most?"
Math - Memory and Part-Whole Bingo
We also learned the game Part-Whole Bingo. This game is part of the Bunk Bed and Apple Boxes unit. Students rolled a set of dice. Then they used Unifix cubes to make that number. Last, they covered up a game board using those cubes. They could use a whole row of Unifix cubes or divide it into different parts. The goal of the game is to fill an entire game board--bingo! For example, if they rolled a six and a four, each student made a stick of ten Unifix cubes. Then they used those cubes to cover up ten spaces on the board or some combination of ten, like six and four, two and eight, or five and five.
As a new part of our morning routine, students are finding different ways to "make" the date. This week students "made" the date using numbers, people, dots, hearts, flowers, TIE/rc starfighters from Star Wars, and number sentences!
At home: Keep looking for opportunities to count with your children. You can count by 1s, 2s, 10s, or 5s. See what feels right for your child. You can also talk about different ways to "make" numbers. Start with a number like five, and then go from there. See if you can find all the different ways to make it.
Writing
At home: Keep asking students to share memories with you. They can practice telling what happened first, next, and last.
Community Meetings
- Ignoring people makes them feel sad and hurts their feelings.
- It's not kind.
- It doesn't fix the problem. It might make the problem bigger.
Then we brainstormed a list of phrases that you can use if you have a problem with a classmate, but you are not yet ready to talk about it. Students came up with the following:
- Let's talk about this later.
- I'm not ready to talk right now. Maybe we can talk at lunch or recess.
Students also suggested that it might be a good idea to take a break in the Take a Break spot.