History & Geography
This week we had our domain assessment and everyone did fantastic! I was very proud of them. On Tuesday we started our unit on the early exploration and settlement of the American Frontier. We read about Daniel Boone and his desire to cross the Appalachian Mountains. We began a timeline for this unit, colored a map of the areas that were populated and those that were still considered the Western frontier , and we read a trade book about Daniel Boone.
Science
Everyone was very excited to learn about minerals and gemstones on Monday. I 
wasn’t surprised to hear how many students in our class have their own rock collections. We talked about how collecting rocks can be a hobby and how learning about them can actually be a career as well. We learn about the three types of rocks and wrote about how they are different , using adjectives to describe them. The students had fun listening to several books on rocks and thinking of questions to ask my geologist friend in California about rocks and the study of them. On Friday we spent a little time outside going on a rock hunt and trying to identify the different types that we found. We also examined the rocks that we have on display in the classroom.
English Spelling
We started off the week with a new sort. This one reviews all of the long and short vowel patterns that we have studied in the last 2 months. The class did several activities with their words, including alphabetizing, writing out the vowell patterns, and writing a sentence for each word. We will have a spelling test next Friday, May 20th. For grammar, we reviewed adjectives and applied this to one of our science lessons for the week. In our journals, the students wrote a story about Daniel Boone and they also wrote a draft of a letter to Sean Daniels, a geologist at the University of California, San Diego. We will be writing a final draft of our letters and sending them off next week
Art
We discussed Memorial Day this week and the students learned about the poppy flower being a symbol of remembrance for people who have given their lives in military service to our country. The students made beautiful pictures of fields of poppies by using balloons dipped in red paint. They learned that lots of paint created OPAQUE flowers, and less paint created TRANSPARENT flowers. Be sure to look at these vivid paintings on the bulletin board at school!
Music
We learned to sing and dance “Pajaritos a bailar,” known in English as “The Chicken Dance.” We also worked on the folk dance steps of one of the class’ favorites, “La bamba.”