Writing

Each weekday morning, students complete a set task such as Metal Insets, Handwriting, Word Sorts, Vocabulary Sorts, or Journal writing. The goal behind these is to help students strengthen their hand, wrist, and forearm muscles as well as their core, in order to be able to complete more sophisticated handwriting. This week, two students decided to put together homework for Ms. Jen! This took on a life of its own with many of the rest of the class joining in and adding to the homework pile. Ms Jen was given written instructions to compose a one thousand and a two thousand word essay, as well as draw three self-portraits, complete an art project, paint a scenery, and solve some math problems. Ms. Lisa “can have a break and needs to check Ms. Jen’s homework!” They are VERY creative with their morning work!

Reading

We are currently finishing up three book clubs and we will be starting new ones next week. Many of the students want to participate in the Daniel’s Duck book club, as the project involves wood carving just like the character in the story. The three groups will be… Flyleaf Press Series of Sight-Word heavy readers, Daniel’s Duck, and a Magic Tree House group working on fluency. We have explained that the only “clubs” that we have in the Lower Elementary class are Book Clubs. This fills the student’s need for belonging, improving literacy, and creating interesting projects!!

Math

We started our Fraction Unit after we came back from break, including the introduction to fraction “families”. These describe the Unit of one divided into equal parts… the family of 2 or 1/2, 3 or 1/3 and so on up until tenths. Each student completed Fraction Family Book in their own pace, we placed partners into groups working through classroom materials at their level of understanding. In this way, we are differentiating instruction and gaining practice.

Theme

In the spirit of our theme, students used a template, scissors, and a hot glue gun to make “mac and cheese” houses, using the leftover mac and cheese boxes that families kindly sent in. It took some good fine-motor skills to cut the template out of the boxes, as well as some engineering skills to make sure that the folds were in the right place when using the hot glue gun to put them together. Once completed, students then painted their house, added windows and doors, and roof tiles in their fabric pattern. As often happens in our classroom, students come up with ideas and the emerging curriculum lead us on an adventure we might not have predicted! We read “Me On the Map” and discussed the differences between a city, a town, and a village and begin some town planning. Using paper tape, students then chose a location for their house, then used a pencil to draw sidewalks and roads around their property. Next, we will be connecting roads, creating parks, and other necessary infrastructure for our town using only paper or card stock, of course.

Chinese New Year

The Lunar New Year is coinciding perfectly with our Paper Unit as we are beginning to introduce paper-making techniques invented in China! Our dedicated class parents have sent in many Lunar New Year activities such as dragon-making kits, a gorgeous book on Chinese Paper Cutting and a slew of decorations!! We can’t wait to celebrate. Ms. Jen will be bringing in pictures and artifacts from a school that she was involved with in Taiwan, and parents are welcome to join us at the beginning of Theme on either Friday, February 2nd or February 9th at 1:30pm, to discuss their experiences in China.

Cheers,

Jen & Lisa