4/23/18

It was pouring outside today!  What a perfect day for a big review of the water cycle!  After a discussion and presentation, the class played a fun review game: Water Cycle BINGO!


In language arts, the students have been learning how to write paragraphs for the last few weeks.  They are really doing a great job with topic and conclusion sentences!  We used the "Hamburger Model" for building a paragraph.  The topic and conclusion sentences are the top and bottom buns, and the layers in between are the supporting sentences.  They have been doing a great job of keeping out random, unrelated sentences.  I explained that including such sentences would be like putting Chinese food or waffles on your hamburger!  We will continue to reinforce paragraph writing through the end of the year.

The class learned about interjections last week.  Today, they worked on alphabetical order.  Most of the students understood how to correctly order words that begin with different letters, but today we learned what to do if words start with the same letter!  They worked in groups to put different words in order.  Then, we took out the dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias.  I know that online searches are the way of the future, but I believe it is important to learn how to look up information in different sources.  The class used the guide words at the top of the pages to look up different words.  They loved seeing the different information that each source provides!


Art class was a lesson in the color wheel!  The class created a "color wheel umbrella", which was perfect for a rainy day!  These turned out super cute, and they learned a lot doing them!

This group has learned early American history up through the American Revolution.  Today, we move west!  The class was introduced to the era of Westward Expansion and the concept of Manifest Destiny.  We talked about the use of covered wagons to move into new territory.   In the upcoming weeks, we will expand on this unit, learning about Daniel Boone, The Oregon Trail, the Gold Rush, the displacement of the Native Americans, and more.  We will even begin a new chapter book that correlates with our history lesson: Adventure to the Pioneer Prairie! by Carole Marsh.

Hopefully our weather will get better and better!  These kids deserve some serious outdoor time together next week!