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| Melting solids with Morgan, Kenzie and Jeziah! |
Here's what we've been learning...
In math we completed our unit on counting money and telling time (Topic 8). We practiced our money skills with real coins and used mini "Judy" clocks to practice our analog time-telling skills. We will review our time (telling time to the hour, half hour, quarter hour, and minutes; elapsed time; alternative ways to say the time) and money skills (identifying coins; counting on from the highest value coin; identifying bills; counting on from the highest value) next week and take the Topic 8 test!
In Miss Varrell's Fundations class we completed Unit 10 on the double vowels ai and ay. Next week we will work on new vowel digraph teams to understand the different spellings for the sound of long e: ee, ea and ey. In Miss Varrell's reading class we finished working in our two-week texts and we will begin working in some new ones: The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Retold by Tomie de Paola and Anansi Goes Fishing Retold by Eric A. Kimmel. In all reading groups students will be reading for a purpose: making inferences. This week we also completed the culminating activity to our shared reading center by performing a short two-role skit called Groundhog Day for the kindergarten students in Rooms 101, 102 and 103! We had great fun practicing our fluency, making masks and writing our introductions for our younger Pine Glen classmates. Many of us have even professed an interest in becoming playwrights ourselves! It is possible that one of our next literacy centers will be a shared writing center where we will be able to create our own plays!
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| Ben and Saumya writing and rehearsing their introduction. |
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| Jack, Kai and Liam drafting an introduction for their play. |
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| Jillian and Jacob finalizing their introduction drafts. |
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| Kenzie and Vivianna rehearsing their introduction. |
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| Phoebe and Gwyneth rehearsing their skit. |
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| Sam and Rahul rehearsing before performance day. |
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| Performing for kindergarten... |
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| Questions and Answers afterwards... |
In writing workshop, we have been working hard on our paragraphs about Matter and Materials. We will finish our drafts, proofread and edit them, and then publish them next week as we conclude our physical science unit.
In Science we have been having so much fun learning about Matter and Materials! Over the past two weeks we have worked with both solids and liquids to observe, predict and explain how heat or cold affects the different types of matter. We learned that temperature can affect states of matter. Some solids and liquids can be cooled and heated and cooled again and they look the same as how they started. We also learned that some solids and liquids can be cooled, heated and cooled again and they change completely! Currently we are working on solving a problem for Mr. Musselman at the Burlington Science Center. He told us that he has a substance that he refers to as "mystery matter" that he works with all the time with his different science classes. However, he has never been able to figure out what type of matter it is. He knew we were studying matter and materials this month so he asked us if we could come up with some experiments to test the substance and see if we could answer that question for him. We will brainstorm some ideas and plan some experiments next week and get back to him with our results!
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| Butter and ice cubes over hot water... |
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| White chocolate chips and ice cubes over hot water... |
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| Temperature is "rockin'" the solids! |
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| "Science...we love you!" |
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| "They really melted fast!" |
Lastly, on Friday this week we went to the theater! We saw Theatreworks' production of The Teacher from the Black Lagoon and Other Stories at the Lynn Auditorium. All week we had been listening to read-alouds of books that were to be featured in the production. We had a fabulous time and really impressed the theater staff and the adults around us with our Appropriate, Safe and Kind Pine Glen behavior. Miss Varrell awarded every student with a hoot card because she was so proud!
Parent F.Y.I.
- Our next field trip will be to the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary (an Audubon property) in May. All parents are welcomed to attend as chaperones. More information will be available closer to the date. There is limited seating on the bus but parents are welcome to carpool to the site (following the bus). If you are interested, please email or send a note to school!
- The Pine Glen Carnival is Saturday, April 1! Please consider being a volunteer. Two-hour time slots are open online by visiting: Pine Glen Spring Carnival Sign-Up Thank you!
- Please continue to keep those reading corps slips coming in and the math fact practice going strong. Thank you for your support!
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