La Lectura

This week we read Las arañas. Our objectives were:

• review and expand our knowledge of adjectives by playing adjective bingo
• practice the comprehension skill summary during our first read
• use the comprehension skill main idea and details during our second read
• begin our Pumpkin writing piece

Las matemáticas

This week we began discussion Shapes and Patterns. Our objectives were:

• review shape names for circle, square, rectangle, and triangle
• identify and count the number of sides and corners
• begin sorting shapes by color and size
• discover how shapes are alike and different

Science

This week we began our next science domain: Animals and Habitats.  We begin this unit with the Arctic Tundra. The class took a local “safari”, identifying things that animals might eat and things that might be shelters for animals around our school.  On Monday we had health with Ms. Bree, our lesson was on nutrition.

Our weekly objectives were to:
• describe what a habitat is
• understand that living things live in habitats to which they are particularly suited
• identify the characteristics of the Arctic tundra habitat
• explain how arctic animals have adapted to the Arctic tundra habitat

History & Geography

Market day was a huge success, the class had so much fun trading and bargaining with one another.  They ate some food from egypt and had a Mummy race.  As we move on in our Ancient Civilizations we take a look at three world religions.
Our weekly objectives were to:

•  identify Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as major monotheistic world religions
• locate Jerusalem, Israel and the area known as the Middle East on a map
• Define monotheism as a belief in one God
• identify the Western Wall as associated with Judaism, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with Christianity, and the Dome of the Rock with Islam

English Sight Words of the Week

new, knew, me, my, no, know, on, or

Specialists

Art with Ms. Kelly

We’ve had a fun and busy month creating art!

Apples 

• Observe shape, color and texture of real apples
• Learn about our state’s apple orchards
• Draw overlapping apples on a plate (aerial view) or in a bowl (side view)
• Use only red, blue, yellow and white to mix a variety of colors
• Each class from K through 4th/5th made stunning apple paintings!

Scarab Beetles

• Learn about importance of Scarab beetles in Ancient Egypt
• Look at photos of beetles, and the class mascots, Rose and Blue
• Learn about the 3 parts of beetles: head, thorax, abdomen
• Create a Beetle Collage using various papers

Owl Guided drawing

• Use shapes and patterns to draw an owl
• Learn about warm and cool colors
• Use watercolors to paint the owl and background
• Their Beautiful owls are on the bulletin board!
• Listen to Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Fun Fall art:

• Pumpkin Drawings with Chalk pastel – beautiful, quick drawings!
• Ginkgo Leaf Rubbings with crayons
• Halloween decorations using paper strips

 

Music with Ms. Nadia

Wow, has it been two months already?! This month flew by as we learned that music can be a way to express feelings—even if the song does not have words. Sometimes the same song can make one person feel happy, and another person feel sad. We used our imaginations while listening to music by Edvard Grieg (Morningand In the Hall of the Mountain King) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) and danced with sock-puppets! We learned the difference between a composer (someone who writes music) and an arranger (someone who plays someone else’s music in a different way). Mozart was mainly a composer, while Grieg both composed his own music and arranged Mozart’s songs. There are many interesting and epic arrangements of In the Hall of the Mountain King,as we experienced while freeze-dancing! Our books this month taught us about Mozart (Play, Mozart, Play!) and Mozart’s sister, Maria Anna Mozart, who was also a composer and talented musician (For the Love of Music).

Other highlights of this month include writing a few songs about Big Foot, playing the glockenspiel, drumming to In the Hall of the Mountain King, and learning simple folk dances to She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.