47 Days of School!

Theme
Our studies of Washington state would not be complete without a unit on salmon!  We've had lots of fun learning about the life cycle of salmon, even though many of us felt pretty sad about the fact that baby salmon (otherwise known as alevin) never get to meet their parents.  We created life cycle games, used puppets to demonstrate the life cycle and acted out the life cycle pretending we were salmon!  It was hard work swimming upstream, especially since we were no longer eating!  Perhaps if asked your child will give you a special performance! This coming week we will be creating some salmon inspired art and will actually get the opportunity to see spawning salmon first hand on our field trip to kennedy creek on Friday!

On Thursday, we had a fellow come from Killer Whale Tales to teach us all about Orcas!  Jeff was AMAZING (he completely captivated all three classes for a total of 2 hours!)!  We learned about the work he does and about the Resident Pods that live in the Puget Sound.  Did you know that Orcas spend their lives living with their moms?  Or that the resident Orcas only eat Chinook Salmon?  Be sure to ask your child what he or she remembers from the presentation!  Jeff is conducting research about things we do at home that can make a difference in helping the Orcas.  He left surveys for each family to fill out as best they can.  When returned each child will receive more Orca trading cards! (5 extra cards for each child that returns their survey and if everyone returns their survey each child will get 10 extra trading cards!!!!)  Please return these as soon as possible!  After the Orca presentation we practiced following step by step instructions to draw our own Orcas!  Be sure to check these out by the door!

Math
Our current studies are focusing on counting, developing number sense, and even place value for some.  This week we've been comparing numbers and putting them in order from least to most.  We learned a game called compare that can be played at home...remember the card game War?  It's very similar, but with a new name and without the competition piece of collecting your opponents cards!  This can be played with a regular set of cards minus the face cards.  Each player turns over a card and the player with the larger card says ME!  After each round cards are placed in a discard pile.  Play continues until all cards are used.  For the next round the player with the smaller card says ME!  This helps in the recognition of numbers and also in grouping images together in our mind as we count the pictures on the card.  For students ready for a SUPER CHALLENGE turn over 2 cards and read them together as a 2 digit number.  Have fun!

Language Arts
Writing Workshop continues as a time looked forward to!  Everyone is growing as a writer!  For some that means now writing their own name...for others it means incorporating simple sight words...for others it means sounding out the beginning and ending sounds of the words they are writing...and for others it means starting to incorporate long vowel patterns into their writing!  In phonics groups some continue to focus on the beginning consonant sounds, others on beginning digraphs like sh, ch and th and others on beginning blends.  If you would like to know specifically what your child is working on please feel free to ask!  We are playing alphabet BINGO again, but this time we are given a word and we have to look for the letter it starts with!  If you are inspired check out a BINGO game and try this version at home!  We have also begun reading groups!  Everyone now has at least 2 books that they can read!  Perhaps you might like to have your child read to you some morning?!  Thank you so much parent volunteers!