Week 3

It was so wonderful seeing all of you last night!  Thank you so much for coming to visit our classrooms and introducing yourselves.  We are looking forward to such a great year!

We just want to remind parents that it is getting cold outside, and it is time to start pulling out warmer jackets, mitts, and hats!  As much as I don't want it to get colder, it has definitely been chilly outside.  We spend some of our time throughout the day outside and some children do not have warm enough layers for the weather.

Did you know that September 21st is International Peace Day?  We have been having some great conversations in class about the importance of Peace, and what peace looks like in our country and in our neighborhood.  We read a book about Malala Yousafzai and her challenges in fighting for education for all children around the world.  We found out that some children in the world are not allowed to go to school! We then took our ideas and wrote down the important things that we felt showed that we live in a peaceful place.

In math we looked at patterns this week, and took a look around the school at where we find patterns. We looked at simple repeating patterns using an ABAB or an ABCABC pattern.  We talked about adding different attributes to our patterns, so it wasn't just a color pattern, or just a shape pattern, but it combined different aspects to add to the pattern.  We used these ideas to create a patterned hand art to put up on our board to represent all of the different types of hands that come together to create Peace.  We will continue to work on patterns this week, and thinking about some of the math vocabulary that goes along with patterns, such as the core, attributes, repeating, and increasing patterns.

We continued our important conversations about honey bees and their impact on our world.  We also learned a few more facts about bees, and what our world might look like without them in our world.  We got to watch a classic Reading Rainbow episode about bees that had some very interesting information that we plan to keep our eyes open for when we go visit the Honey Farm.  We looked at comparison pictures from a grocery store that show all of the products we have available to us, and then a picture of how much would be missing if there were no more bees.

We are sad to say goodbye to Mr. Cooper in music.  He has been an amazing teacher, and we had a lot of fun with him!  But luckily, we get to welcome Mrs. McBride back to Cranston after her maternity leave!

In gym we continue to learn different ways of moving through the gym, such as galloping, skipping, and side shuffling.  We have also been practicing our running in preparation for the Terry Fox run on Friday morning.