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Our 3 D map of Tyngsboro!
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Wow! It was so awesome to set up all our paper bag houses and buildings in an approximation of our town! We determined where we should place the buildings using the river, school, and our northern neighboring state of New Hampshire. We had almost every place in Tyngsboro represented from restaurants Tremontes. Cazedores, Sullivan's...), entertainment (Max's Golf, Roller Kingdom...), municipal buildings (fire and police station, library, schools, a church...), Dunkin's (I didn't even need to come up with that one!), and others. It was a fun wrap up to our map unit.
We also wrapped up the plants unit in science by reading about and drawing plant life cycles. Everyone also teamed up to do research on a plant of their choosing which had a unique habitat. They learned what each plant needs in its given habitat and how weather affects its survival. Venus Flytrap was a popular choice (it grows in the swamps of the Carolinas in the USA), Forget-Me-Not, a mountain dweller, cactus, a desert plant, and lily pads, thriving in ponds.
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| Lily pads and pond habitat research |
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| Venus Flytraps and their swamp habitats |
Now that we have traveled the world from the rainforests to the arctic and to Antarctica, we will change our library theme to the American west. Lots of new book series and activities await! Meanwhile here is our final Penguin activity- a bit of research on a penguin of their choice: Emperor, Little Blue, Macaroni, King, and Chinstrap.
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| Our penguin reports |
We are becoming experts on identifying 3D shapes in blocks and drawings, but also in real world examples. We've enjoyed a few youtube videos (3 D shapes I know...) and have sung along with them. We have sorted objects together under each shape heading, and we have identified shapes by their most important attributes of number of faces, edges, and vertices.
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| We know the attributes! |
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| Shape sorting team |
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| Teamwork with shapes |
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| Organized items identified! |
Math stations explore drawing in 3 D, identifying real world objects that have attributes of 3 D shapes, and hunting for pictures in dictionaries that are spheres, cylinders, cubes, cones, rectangular prisms, triangular prisms, and pyramids.
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| Dictionary hunt for 3 D shaped items |
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| Spin a real world object that matches a 3 D shape |
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| Shape game |
Phonics is definitely ramping up a bit as we decode words with vowel teams (oa, ea, ai...). The same general rule applies to these words as it did with silent e words- most times if there are 2 vowels, the first one will 'say' its name and the second will be silent. Here we are singing, "When two vowels set off walking, only one can do the talking...".
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| We spelled 'toad'! |
We've also been learning how to spell number words and have a cheer for number one. Reading buddies enjoyed some new books together this week - take a look!
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| We read the whole book together! |
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| The Great Fuzz Frenzy |
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| New western book series! |
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| Saying the cheer for spelling 'one'! |
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| My pot of gold |
I guess we are missing St. Patrick's Day but these friends got a sneak coloring activity with some sparkly gold!
Writing activities are now focusing on procedural writing or 'How-Tos'. The kids have been writing the steps for riding a bike, making a smoothie, caring for a baby, building legos, planting flowers, and many more. They are using transitional words such as First, Next, Then, and Last. The personal narrative collection will be sent home soon.
I would like to wish Cherylynn a Happy Birthday - it is today but we are not in school. Hope you have a fun birthday - we will sing to you when we are back!
The 2nd trimester has ended and we will look forward to many new units. Keep hunting for examples of 3 D shapes, practicing telling time (especially to the half hour), reading anything around your house, telling directions on how to do things that you are an expert in (using our transitional words), and practicing spelling! Report cards are complete but locked in school - great progress everyone!
Most of all, I wish everyone a very healthy week!
Mrs. Dagley
