Jasmine Kindergarten News from Ms. Diana:
Weather changes have been difficult this past week and prevented us from getting enough outdoor activities. Ms. Kim and I worked creatively to motivate them to participate in the weekly activities. Our spring circle brings new elements every week and we all enjoy the journey, the verse and songs. The art folders are getting fuller and fuller and we’ve started working on the new Giant Loom.
Magnolia Kindergarten News from Ms. Heidi:
Although we missed our Forest Kindergarten yesterday, we had a great rain walk in the morning. Later, when the thunder moved in, Mr. Will shared the book “Thunder Cake” with the class as they rested under silken blankets. Ms. Frances and the Sunflowers made Thunder Cake to share with the rest of us as we counted how fast the thunder was traveling.
Grade 1 News from Ms. Contento:
Grade 2 News from Ms. Mullen:
We are back in our math block and working through our multiplication forms. The children completed a drawing for the 6s and 7s skip counting and also wrote down the times tables. They also listened to and discussed a story about a boy who tried to capture the sun in a snare. They really enjoyed this tale and decided to put on a short play of it in our classroom.
We checked in with place value to the millions, which we will continue to check in about during the course of this block. We discussed the basics of how multiplication is essentially an amount of groups of numbers (for example, 6x4 could be read as six groups of four and 4x6 is four groups of six) and we drew out some examples on the board. We also did some vertical multiplication and I gave several examples of how it is just the same numbers multiple times, and how we will get the same number if we add or multiply (for example, 6+6+6+6+6 is the same as 6, five times).
We began discussing the concept of greater than, less than, or equal to and they were introduced to the hungry alligator that loves to eat the larger numbers.
Grades 3 / 4 News from Ms. Flores:
This week we completed our look at the lives of gorillas and bald eagles, and we began to study elephants. The class created some lovely drawings of each of these animals. The day after I tell the class about an animal, we review all the facts we heard. A few students come to board to write, while I call on students to give us facts. After our list is complete, the class is asked to create a write-up using the information on the board. The third graders are still allowed to use a write-up that I make. We are working hard to construct write-ups that describe the animal in a logical way, For example, if we are writing about how the animal eats, we are gathering all the information about how it eats into the same paragraph. Before they put their write-up in their main lesson books, I check their rough draft for mistakes. Through this, the class continues to practice spelling, capitalization and sentence structure.
Grades 5 / 6 News from Ms. Nelson:
MAIN LESSON: ANCIENT GREEK HISTORY - This week we explored the rise of the Greek City-State as well as Tyrant Cleisthenes of Athens' great invention of "Demokratia", thus laying the foundation for our later exploration of American civics (which the 7th grade will encounter next year). The students also learned about the Persian Wars, and the important battles of that conflict, such as Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea. We touched briefly on the Peloponnesian War as well, which weakened Athens (defeated by Sparta) and then Sparta (defeated by Thebes), creating an opening for an outsider, Philip II of Macedon, to conquer large swaths of Greece and lay the foundation for the great empire that would come through the rise of his son, Alexander the Great. During our extra main classes, I have been reading the stories of the great heroes of Greece, such as Jason and the Argonauts, Perseus, and Theseus. I have also been sharing a summary of the Iliad with the whole class when time permits. As if this were not enough, the class is in the process of selecting the odes that we will present at the Pentathlon and working on our shadow play, Demeter and Persephone, which we will perform there on Friday night.
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