Newsletter: December 1st

 

Hey Everyone,

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday break with your families. The kids came back full of stories to share. We used these stories - and the careful way we tell them to make them more interesting for others - to jump back into our inquiry into narrative writing. This inquiry has found us learning to tell a story bit-by-bit with lots of detail, description, and dialogue while also paying attention to conventions such as capital letters, periods, and spelling. 

Their stories are developing really nicely. It's always amazing to see how much children grow as readers and writers during the 2/3 loop. It's a time of HUGE gains - but I bet the K/1 teachers would say the same about their two years with the kids as well. If you haven't already heard about the stories they are writing, be sure to ask. 

In math we've continued to practice our multiplication facts. We've now finished focusing on the 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 tables. This week our focus in the 4s. If you're not already practicing each night, please start quizzing them. Just a couple minutes a night is plenty.

In math, we used a game called "Beat the Calculator" to practice our 4s
time table. One person called out the problem and the other two - one equipped
with a calculator and the other with their brain - raced to be the first to solve it.

Not only was this a fun way to practice our multiplication facts but it 
also provided an opportunity to learn how to use a calculator.

We're also at the tail end of our inquiry into division. On Monday the
kids worked to figure out how 17 Kings could equally share 42 elephants. Not
only was this an opportunity to work through a problem with large numbers but
it was also an opportunity to revisit the concept of "remainders."

A popular strategy for solving these sorts of problems is to draw a picture
where we "pass out" whatever is being shared equally.

We're also learning how both multiplication and division are closely related
and each can be represented using an array.

To practice this, we completed a couple worksheets. It's funny how excited
many of them get to do a worksheet. I guess that's because it's novel for them since
we rarely do that sort of work - outside our practice of time tables.

In science we're learning about States of Matter - solids, liquids, and gases. The focus this week has been how each of these states of matter can be changed by either adding or removing heat. These processes are referred to as melting, evaporating, condensation, and freezing. To learn more about melting and how liquids take the shape of the containers they are in, we melted crayons down and reshaped them using foil molds. The kids had such a GREAT time doing this!

We learned it's way easier to peel crayons if you soak them in water first.

Everyone chose the colors they wanted for their crayon creation.

Earlier in the week we watched a video about how glass blowers create new 
glass projects by heating it, reshaping it, then letting it cool. This was exactly what we 
were doing as well - only using crayon wax.

The results were all so different based on the colors they used, the size
of crayon chunks they added, and the shapes they molded their foil into.

These kids love science so much. They'll be even more excited when
we continue our study of Changes in Matter by making our own ice cream!