Week of 3/11

I hope everyone was able to get out and enjoy the gorgeous weekend that we had! 

Last week, we said goodbye to our student-teacher, Mrs. Tingen. The kids loved her visits with us on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and they each wrote her a letter to thank her for her help in our class.

 Here's a look at what's happening this week:

Language Arts: 
This week's story: Arthur's Reading Race
Strategy: Predicting
Skill: Cause and effect
Phonics: More with sounds of long e (i.e. bean, feet), inflected -ed ending
Writing: "Super-size" sentences/letter-writing

Math:
We will continue learning how to measure with both nonstandard and standard units of measurement. We'll focus mainly on length, but towards the end of the week, we will move on to weight/volume. 

Social Studies:
We're moving right along with our plants unit. We started by comparing the characteristics of living and nonliving things. As we discovered that plants are one kind of living thing, we learned that plants come from seeds. So we examined a lima bean seed to learn the parts of seeds: 

So this week, we'll continue to explore plants by learning more about their parts and we'll begin growing our own 'greenhouses'. The plants assessment will be on Friday.

Important notes/reminders:

• Book Fair opens Monday (3/11)! 
• Students are allowed to bring in fruit/vegetable seeds if they wish to share them with us. Many were interested in starting a seed collection to note the various sizes, shapes, and colors of seeds. =)