The Week in Review

                                      This information is also found in Walter's weekly email:

This week, students were excited to start official math groups. We had math three times this week – Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Wednesday was picture day, so math time was pushed aside, and Friday was our annual trip to Howell Nature Center. During the days we DID have math, children in my math group have been having fun diving into the first big theme of the year – place value and number sense. We read some stories to start the class, and learned a game called “High Number.” We will continue to play this game and will make it increasingly trickier as time goes on. Of course, we also spent about 20 minutes each math class working at our own place in our Singapore math books.

We had not one, but two field trips this week, both nature-related. On Monday, we spent a lovely afternoon picking berries, flowers, and grapes and Sweet Acres in Ypsilanti. And, as I said, we rounded off the week at Howell Nature Center.

picking berries at Sweet Acres

getting our fishing poles

We drew our self-portraits this week, which turned out very sweet. The next step is to design frames. I was hoping to do this by Curriculum Night on Thursday, but we simply ran out of time. We will be collecting items from nature to make our frames. I think they will make our classroom an even cozier and friendlier place to be.

In Science Lab with Shan and during project time with the other 1^st/2^nd grade, we are learning about pollinators and flowers. Shan had the children make hand pollinators out of various items – a clothespin, a pipe cleaner, wooden sticks, and a pompon. This STEM challenge had children work by themselves and then in groups to improve their design – trying to get as much “pollen” (orange Tang) from one flower to another. In our classroom, Grace and I (with lots of flowers brought in from classroom families – thank you!) set up desks with paper, magnifying classes, and art supplies. Children really studied the blooms and then drew them using their “science eyes.” Then, they were allowed to snip the flowers apart and really examine all the parts – very exciting! It made quite a mess, but it was a beautiful mess!

We continue to enjoy our read-aloud, Winnie the Pooh, and have done some writing and illustrating as well. Work has begun on our Memory Page books and poetry anthologies, and these will be continued all year. Next week, we will start another wonderful reading weekly tradition – Special Readers. Ian and Alex are on deck for Monday!

writing in our memory books will be a year long project