News from the Totally Awesome Tigers

HAPPY SPRING!

Just in time for spring, our tomato seeds have sprouted! I suppose they too have been enjoying the warm sun!

We are busy, busy, busy preparing for upcoming conferences...goal check-ins, self-assessment books, reading check-ins...

Please make sure that you are signed up for a conference! We look forward to sharing with you!

I will be collecting jars (quart sized mason-like jars--labels removed please:) and paper towel rolls for upcoming projects. Please bring any that you might have! Thank you!

MATH

Our most recent explorations have centered around the topics of area and perimeter. As an introduction to these concepts, we began by exploring the "footprints" (outlines) made by various objects. We tried fitting geoblocks into a variety of footprints and traced a variety objects, creating footprints that we later used in a guessing game! You might try tracing some objects secretly and then having your child try to guess what they were!

Some of us arranged shapes in order by the size of their area and then by the size of their perimeter. Others created multiple shapes with a given area...not as easy as it may seem! Some of us even chose to challenge ourselves to create more shapes during choosing! We also created our own shapes and determined the perimeter. Phew!

LANGUAGE ARTS

What if everything you touched turned to puppy dogs? or cats? or monkeys? After finishing our latest read aloud, The Chocolate Touch, we thought and wrote about what types of magic touches we would most like to have! We all agreed that we'd have to be really careful, though, because what if you touched your mom?!

Breaking refrigerators and throwing them into the ocean...mixing up the fruit and veggies at the grocery store...sounds like some tricky leprechauns may be heading our way! Hopefully they won't arrive until next year! We had enough leprechauns over at OCS for this year. And geez were they sly...we didn't even catch one leprechaun in our so very creative traps! The visit of these little green friends inspired us to draw pictures of what we would do if we were leprechauns! Watch out for your refrigerators and be sure to see if you are really buying veggies! With these pictures we practiced adding as much detail as we could so that our audience would have a clear idea of what was going on!

We have started something new for reading workshop! We now have partners (from our class) and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we take turns reading to each other. On Mondays we read independently, but then summarize what we read about with our partners. This new format helps us practice reading aloud (working on fluency and expression for some) and making sure that we understand what we're reading.

THEME

The layer for this week was the UNDERSTORY! It is dark, yet still filled with abundant plant and animal life! We continued working on creating informational pieces that will eventually be put together into a large rainforest book. We drew and labeled 3 plants and 3 animal that live in this layer, as well as wrote a paragraph describing the characteristics of this layer. One of the most interesting facts we learned was that some of the leaves can be as large as an umbrella (an adaptation that helps them to capture as much sunlight as possible)!

We are excited to begin our very own research projects, choosing a rainforest animal to research and create a poster about at home! (a detailed description of the project will be in your parent box Monday!) After looking through a variety of books, each student made a list of the animals he or she would be interested in studying, circling the top 3 choices. I used this information to assign animals to students, ensuring that there would be no overlap. Students will find out which animals they are studying on Monday! We also thought about all of the different things we would like to learn about rainforest animals, and I compiled these questions into a list, that has helped me to design the project. Some things students are interested in learning include: how big are their eyes? how sharp are their teeth? how big are babies? how old can they live to be? do they climb? do they save each other's lives? so they play? do they have fur or scales?