Weekly Update

News To Know

• Friday, February 12th we will have our Pal-entine's Day celebration. Our focus will be friendship, partner activities, and cooperation. The kiddos may bring pal-entine cards (unaddressed please for ease in distribution) and a decorated container to collect their pal-entine cards. We will need a few donations. Please check the writeboard. Thanks in advance.
• We are almost ready to move!! Tentatively, we are scheduled to move back into building B beginning on Friday with class resuming there on Tuesday, February 16th. If you are able to help us move on Friday afternoon or Monday, please let me know.
• No school for students on Monday, February 15th, President's Day
• No school February 24,25,26--Winter Break
• Please return the Family Surveys that were sent home this week by Friday, February 12th. They can be returned to the front office or in the clear folders.
• The Chinese New Year celebration has been postponed to Saturday, March 6.

Academic Update

This week we explored the grasslands of the world through stories, pictures, books, drawings, and a "safari". We learned about the grasslands around the world such as North America's Great Plains, Africa's Savannah, Serengeti and Kapiti Plain, the Steppes of Asia and the Pampas of South America. We listed grassland animals and then decided which region we could find them in, created a great grassland mural, talked about camouflage, and explored the predator/prey relationship. We also inspected the penny and nickel, began making exchanges between those 2 coins, looked at 3D shapes around the school, discussed the difference between 2D and 3D shapes and played several games with the number grid. For our literacy learning, we continued alphabetizing, analyzed words for the ch and th sounds and worked hard on our sight words. We also worked in reading groups on various skills such as short vowel sounds, alphabetical order, story recall and use of apostrophes.
Next week we will wrap up our "Going on a Bear Hunt" unit with a review of the biomes we studied and 2 assessments that will ask students to match animals to habitats and to create a food chain for a chosen habitat. We will also measure time, create individual graphs from surveys, look at the dime, continue our comparison of 2D and 3D shapes and exchange pennies, nickels and dimes. Our themes of compassion and creativity will continue through an exploration of friendship and discussions of pivotal African Americans.