Pre-First Happenings

The girls have been plugging away on their latest Writer's Workshop project, a personal narrative.  Together as a class, we created a rubric for the girls to use when assessing their own writing.  As the girls prepare to publish their work, they can confidently review their work with us.

Our latest "author" sharing her writing in our Author's Chair.

In math, we reviewed sorting objects by the characteristics they have in common.  We challenged the girls to think outside of the box and find unique ways to sort their math manipulatives.  

Here are the girls using a Venn Diagram to classify different shapes.

Each week, the girls are confidently sorting their word study words and completing a daily writing activity with them.

In math this week, we introduced the girls to Base 10 blocks which will help them learn place value.  By the end of a math period, the girls were able to use the Base 10 blocks to show a number.

Last week in science we did an experiment on reasons why some animals hibernate in the winter.  The girls were given fresh pieces of pineapple and were given the green light to go ahead and eat them.  We talked about how the pineapple smelled, what it tasted like and how easy it was to bite into and eat it.  Then they were given pineapple that had been frozen in an ice cube.  They had to attempt to get to the pineapple and eat it; the girls discovered that this was not an easy task.  As they were gnawing their way through the ice, we talked about how difficult it was to actually get the food out and how hard it must be for animals to find food in the winter.  The girls realized, at the end of the experiment, that one reason some animals hibernate in the winter was due to the difficulty to find and eat food; it is not easy to smell, find or eat!

Many thanks to Uncle Bug for coming in to read as our Mystery Reader this week.

The past two days in science, the girls conducted a two day experiment on how American Wood Frogs hibernate.  Make sure to ask your daughter what she did and what was the outcome of the experiment.