Literacy Events {March 4 - 8}

Next week we'll be celebrating Read Across America with several fun events!  Check out the info below . . .

On WEDNESDAY, for World Read Aloud Day, we are going to partner with our first grade friends to read aloud together.  Each child needs a picture book that he/she is able to read fluently to read with their buddy.  Since March 2 is Dr. Seuss's birthday, students may wish to bring a Dr. Seuss book for this activity - or any favorite picture book is fine. Your child may bring the book to school prior to Wednesday if they wish. 

Donuts for Dads

This page was sent home in backpacks today (Monday, 2/25)

KE Literacy Night

Updates

Whew!  It's been a crazy past week with the holiday on Monday and snow day on Friday!  This week will be a little different too, with a 3 hour early dismissal (12:30) tomorrow (Tuesday, Feb. 26) due to the MP Girls BB team playing at state, and a regularly scheduled 2 hour early out on Wednesday.

We'll be back in the week with posts updating you on our classroom happenings, but wanted to be sure you are aware of a few things:

• Next week (March 4 - 8) we'll be celebrating Literacy Week/Read Across America at KE!  We have lots of fun activities planned, including guest readers, a read and feed, and even an author visit.  On Thursday, March 7, we will also have a LITERACY NIGHT, and you're invited to come eat a free family meal at KE from 5:15 - 6:15, and then parents can listen to author/illustrator Marianne Richmond share her love of writing and drawing while children (all ages!) can participate in literacy activities from 6:30 - 7:30.  Plan to attend this FUN evening!

• A yellow packet regarding Literacy Night is in backpacks today (youngest and only students). There is an order form on which you can preorder books to purchase written by author Marianne Richmond (and can choose a personalized message that you would like her to write in the book(s).  The order form says that it is due on Feb. 22, but just return it asap.

• Live Healthy Iowa - we are still recording our minutes of physical activity, and for the next 2 weeks will also record our milk intake (in ounces).  Students have done a great job remembering their minutes to record on the charts at school.

• Donuts for Dads - We're looking forward to a fun afternoon in third grade on Friday, March 8!  Your child will be bringing home a note with the specifics regarding our Donuts for Dads event.  Each child is invited to bring their Dad (or Grandpa/Uncle/adult friend - but remember, each child should only bring ONE person, unless he/she has 2 Dads, due to space limitations) to spend the afternoon rotating through our Friday stations, and of course enjoying yummy donuts!

• Spring pictures that were scheduled for Friday (when we had our snow day) are rescheduled for Friday, March 15.

TGIF - Friday Stations

We wrapped up our week with stations!  Take a look below at some of the activities for this week, including playing a social studies definition game to review for the unit test, a presidential facts sorting activity, catching up on math and other assignments, and using the ipads.

PS - Don't forget - No school on Monday as we observe Presidents Day

Social Studies

We've wrapped up Unit 2 this week with a lesson on national holidays and symbols.  Students also battled "against" Mrs. H. for points (correct answers earned points for the class, incorrect answers earned points for the teacher), playing a trivia style review game to prepare for next week's unit test.  Both sections did great and "beat" Mrs. H.

Sorry, no pics - I will try to remember next week. :(

Language Skills

Spelling words for this week were all words with an ending, and for which the "base" word would have ended with a y, but to spell the word with its ending the y had to be changed to an i (ex. candies, dryest).  We also learned about jargon, and reviewed simple and compound sentences. 

To correlate with our genre study of biographies and the upcoming holiday of Presidents day, students are researching Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.  We are working to gather facts that we'll use to write our own biographies.  This week we used BrainPop videos and books to find facts.

Valentine's Day Fun

In math we did an activity that reviewed our estimating skills, creating a bar graph, grouping activities and basic adding and subtraction.

We also enjoyed our many Valentines and playing games and eating yummy snacks out our party!

 

Oh no!  Too much fun dip? ;)

Math

We continued to review the subtraction facts with regrouping for our Mental Math exercises.  Learning the different 2-D shapes was the focus this week along with working on symmetry.