Happy New Year! It is great to be back at school. The children seem to be rested and I do believe everyone grew at least 1 inch in the 2 weeks of vacation. We enjoyed welcoming each other back and sharing adventures of our time away from school.
This week was filled with beginnings and endings. We reviewed all the math that we have done in the last 4 months and then each child was assessed. As a whole, the students were very successful. Individual results will be shared with you in your child’s Progress Report, which is distributed later this month.
We started learning Geometry. We will be looking at 2D and 3D shapes, learning their attributes, and recognizing how they are part of everything in our world. We will make, draw, build, and reconstruct shapes. There is a lot of rich vocabulary in the world of Geometry. This is a very hands-on unit and you will see many projects appear in the classroom that are related to our work. The students are also continuing to practice math facts. They are learning double facts to 20. There is a song that we sing to help us memorize these facts. After that we will go on to “doubles plus 1” or “doubles minus 1”. We want the students to be able to compute these facts in a snap! You could help them practice.
We also started a unit on Geography. The children will be studying maps, land forms, earth, water, continents, oceans. By the end of the unit they should be able to tell you their street address, town, state, country, continent, and planet. We have already made connections between Geometry and Geography. The globe is a sphere, which is divided at the equator, to make the northern and southern hemispheres. There are many great connections.
We are finishing poetry. Each child selects two poems to publish for our anthology. He or she will read those poems at our Poetry Reading later this month. The exact date will be revealed shortly. Look for your invitation.The next genre is non-fiction (How To) books.The children will be starting to read non-fiction during Read & Rest. Expect to see non-fiction coming home in their book bags. They will be reading and writing non-fiction all winter. This prepares them to write a research paper in the spring.
Our Pajama Day was a great success! It was a blustery, cold day and we were all warm and toasty in our PJs. We had donuts and orange juice for snack. Skizza Day was draped in freshly, fallen, snow and the temperature was moderate. Life is good at BCD!