My new nephew is here!

Math Songs for November 5-9

This week in Math we're going to focus on getting down our important math facts. We'll be looking at combos that make 10, doubles, and fact families. Here are 2 songs we'll be listening to in class. Hopefully you can play them at home so they can become engrained in students' memories!

 

 

 We discussed the importance of learning our doubles facts is so that we can easily do everything in between, also! (For example: If we know 5+5=10, we can quickly figure out that 5+6=11!)

Keep playing it until your student is able to correctly fill in all the blanks during verse 2! It goes quickly!

Pumpkin Math!!

Today, we used pumpkins to learn about measurement, subtraction, estimation, and counting! The kids had a blast scooping out the pumpkin "guts"! Tomorrow we'll use the pumpkin seeds to work on our skip counting!

Here are some pictures from the event! What a blessed teacher I am to have such a wonderful class!!

October 22-25

Reading Focus: Cause and Effect
 - What is a cause?
 - What is an effect?
 - How can you determine the cause and effect in a story?
 - How do readers use cause and effect to understand what they read?
 - What signal words help me find the cause and effect?

Phonics Focus:
1st Grade: Review Short Vowels
2nd Grade: "Long E" patterns

Writing:
Taking steps to publish our own cause and effect stories.

Social Studies:
Globes vs. Maps, 7 Continents and 5 Oceans

Math:
Boys - Rounding to hundreds
Girls - Geometry (squares, triangles, rectangles, circles)

Bible:
Continuing to study Daniel. We will be learning the story of the fiery furnace. The memory verse will stay the same. Thanks to Ms. Justine, I was made aware that I put the wrong reference on the verse! Oops! It should say Daniel 6:27!! Thanks for catching that! :) "The Living God rescues and saves; He performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on earth."

Wear Purple on Thursday for Sunbear Spirit! (We'll be meeting at Cornerstone Baptist again that day!)
No School on Friday!

Continents and Oceans

Practice the 7 Continents with this quick and easy song that we've been learning in class! 

Tune: Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

Europe, Africa, North and South America

Europe, Africa, North and South America
Australia, Antarctica, Asia
Europe, Africa, North and South America.

And the 5 Oceans:
(This is new since I went to school! When I was a student, we only had the Indian, Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific... Hello, Southern Ocean!)

Tune: Frere Jacque

There are five,
There are five,
O-oceans, O-oceans.
Pacific and Atlantic,
Indian and Arctic,
Southern, too.
Southern, too.

A Fishy Week

This week we're doing a unit based on the book The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. The book talks about sharing, and we've also discussed being friends, copycats, including others, and being brave. Our focus is on character traits and feelings!

We've easily tied this into Science, since our new topic for the week just happened to be FISH! We have now learned about mammals, birds, and fish. Just have amphibians, insects, and reptiles left before we've covered all of the animals!

On Friday afternoon, we will be having a culminating activity for the week by watching Finding Nemo. We will discuss character traits and feelings, as well as talk about the underwater habitat and features of a fish! I feel that this is an educational way to reward the students for all of their hard-work this quarter!

In Math, the boys are working on rounding numbers to the tens and hundreds. The girls are learning about ordinal numbers (first, second, third) and continue to practice one more, one less! All of the students have learned a game called Speed Math that they should be playing at home to reinforce basic addition math facts! (All that is needed to play are a deck of cards (take out the face cards) and two players. Each player starts with half the stack. Players flip over their top card at the same time. Whichever player can add the two numbers together first, takes the cards. The goal is to get all of the cards. We're playing with addition now, but it can easily be adapted to multiplication for older students and as we progress in the year!)

In Bible this week, we're talking about building good reputations. We're using Daniel as our Biblical example. We'll keep going with Daniel next week and get into the story of the fiery furnace. Our verse is "The Living God rescues and saves; He performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on earth." - Daniel 6:16

Remember that next week, there is no school on Friday (Hari Raya Haji). The following week will be the end of the first quarter, Fall Fest (Nov. 1, half day!), and the beginning of the second quarter!

October 8-12

The first quarter is flying by! I can't believe we're more than halfway! Report cards come out in 3 weeks and we have a lot to do before then!

This week:

Reading Essential Question:
What clues tell you how a character feels?

Word study:
1st Grade - Short e
Check out this website for a new 'short vowel' song we're learning in class!

2nd Grade - long i

Writing:
Identifying Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives in writing

Social Studies:
Maps vs. Globes, Cardinal Directions (North, South, East, and West), & Map Skills 

Math:
Place Value and Number Sense


Bible:
John the Baptist
Jesus Calms the Storm
Memory Verse: Mark 4:41 "They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”"