MCGHEE'S MESSAGES
DECEMBER 1-5
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
12/10 Circle of Friends Motorlab Party from 9:30-10:30 (only Maddie, John, Logan and their circle of friends buddies)
12/11 Upper grader Shine Time performance after school
12/15 Shadow Ridge Choir will perform for us in the morning
12/17 1:45 2nd grade Holiday Party (all are welcome to come!)
12/19 2nd Grade Polar Express Day--wear pajamas
12/19 Early release
12/20-1/4 Winter holiday break YAHOOOOO!!!!
We had a very busy week! It was so nice to have Mr. Dirks as our mystery reader. Maddie was truly surprised! We loved the new books and the beautiful snowflake bubbles! So fun.
Our Wednesday Genius Hour is going really well. We will continue to do this every week, so thank you for sending their personal devices to help us out with technology and research.
It was so great to watch the Orion lift off and water landing. Our very own Mrs. Jones' father works on that space program. She was able to share lots of extra information. She is hoping to bring Chris Ferguson, the potential pilot of the space taxi and her father to school to visit. WOW! History being made before our eyes. Maybe one of our young budding engineers will be the one to go to Mars!
Thank you all so much for your contributions to Mr. Victor on his birthday. He was so suprised and touched! All of the cafeteria workers came out and cheered and sang with us as we honored him. I love that the kids were excited to be givers and selfless. These are the life lessons we want them to have!
There are a few children that have not brought in their cotton holiday fabric and coat hangers. Please send these in ASAP. We will start making our project right away and it can be time consuming, so sooner is better. Thanks!
We participated in the stand on 1 foot for 2 minutes challenge to bring attention to childhood obesity. Mr. Restuccia prepared some wonderful facts and information to share and we all wobbled together! Great conversations!
Hope every one has a great week!
WHAT WE'VE BEEN LEARNING
Language Arts-We started our first blogs on Kid Blog. They kids were so enthusiastic! I will unlock it soon and allow them to have free access to it from home. We started our holiday book clubs. The kids are reading short novels in groups of 3's. We will be using their blog sites to type up a synopsis about their books. We did some work on making nouns plural. We looked at when to use an s, es, or ies. We will continue practicing this so hopefully we will master it. We also worked on capitalizing words. The kids made little cheat sheets to keep in their writing journals to help them remember what words get a capital letter. The class has bee busy writing using some fun story starters with holiday themes. The room goes silent as those pencils fly! This week we will be doing gingerbread man comparisons. We may eat some too! I will let you know if there will be food involved and double check the candy and such with you prior to the activity.
Social Studies-We took a look at the past compared to today. It was fun to look at schools, machines and toys from the past. We also looked at hobbies and things that are passed down to us in our families by the previous generations. I challenged them to ask their families lots of questions about life when they were young. Hopefully, they all will try to value and learn from their family members. We also watched a short video about how people in different cultures celebrate Christmas. We will talk about other celebrations as well.
Science- We did some talking sound energy. We learned about how long vibrations make lower sounds and short, fast vibrations make higher sounds. We played with my boom whackers and tried to guess the pitch and then tried to change the octaves on each one. They are just pvc pipes cut at various links. I also played my lap harp for them. They LOVED it! We sang and tried to identify the high and low sounds on the strings. Many of them said they wanted one. I ordered it and the boom whackers from HearthSong catalog a few years ago. I can try to look up more specific information if anyone is truly interested. We will begin looking at magnets and force and motion next.