Wrapping up September!

In math this week, we started composing numbers up to 20. We used snap cubes to help us do single digit addition and then wrapped up the week doing addition word problems. We read the word problem together and then looked for key words in our word problem. Other than using snap cubes, we drew pictures to help us.

We met our 5^th grade science buddies for the first time on Thursday. The kids really enjoyed this. We will do science buddies once a month with Ms. Le’s class. There were 4 stations that we rotated around. Check out the fun we had!

In VLA, we continued learning more colors. We will have our third sound check this Friday. We have been studying the words every day in class during VLA time on our dry erase boards. I ask the kids to write one sentence per word and than pick two pictures to draw. 

Skip Counting by 5's, Tree Frog, First Guidance Lesson and Mid-Autumn Festival!

So we got a tree frog last week and it never came out until today when I went up to school on a weekend. The poor kids have been peeking into the tank trying to see what it looks like but no luck throughout the week. So ta-daaaa, here it is!

 Mrs. Cardosa, our school counselor, came into our class on Wednesday and taught our first guidance lesson. She taught us our 5 senses and related it back to how a counselor can help us.

 All week, we learned about Mid-Autumn festival. We made lanterns and hung them up in the front of the school. I hope everyone that joined us on Friday had fun. Our next big event will be Lunar New Year and that will be in February.

Here are some links to learn more about Tet Trung Thu: 
http://www.adoptvietnam.org/vietnamese/tet-trung-thu.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM_ukjzEydo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Wv0jHPJAw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx_wIzbYMtk

 In math this week, we learned how to skip count by 5’s. Please make 
sure you are practicing at home with your child. Skip counting by 5’s is real important because it will help the kids tell time and count coins later on in the year. We want to master skip counting by 10’s, 5’s and 2’s. For our math warm-up, we sat in a circle as I scrambled the numbers. I called on a student and they would have to go into the circle and place the next number in the correct spot. We skip counted all the way on to 120!

Friendship Flowers, Vietnamese Writing and Skip Counting by 10's

Even though it was only a 4 day week, it felt like a very long week. The kids are slowly getting into the routine of things. We got a lot done this week. In Vietnamese Language Arts (VLA), we continued practicing our sight words and had a test over it on Friday. Next week we will start to learn the colors in Vietnamese and have a test over the words in 2 weeks. Not only did we have our first Vietnamese test for the first time, but we also wrote in our VLA journals for the first time. The kids did a very good job on these. Journal writing is an independent activity. I really stress to the kids that they need to have neat handwriting when writing.

 We have been practicing skip counting by 10’s in math. We did lots of different activities. Next week, we will skip count by 5’s.

 Mrs. Skalaban continues to teach good manners, how to be a good friend and respect. We read a fun book about a fox trying to catch and make a friend and then made our own friendship flowers.

 In Social studies, we made a map of our own house.

Please don't forget to join us on celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival at school next Friday, September16th! It will be fun!

Second Week Completed!

We have been working hard with getting used to the routine of school. We are continuing to discuss manners, sharing about our families, learning how to say family members in Vietnamese and making 10 in math. This week, we had the opportunity to visit Mrs. Neill in the computer lab. We drew a picture on Tux Paint on what we did over the summer. Some of the kids had some really cute pictures. This week, we will visit Mrs. Richey in the library and hopefully we’ll get to check out our first book of the year. I always look forward to library days. Mrs. Richey plans some very cool lessons. If you would like to sign your child up for Birthday Book Club, please make sure to visit the library!

 The kids worked on their respect dolls in Mrs. Skalaban’s class. Check out our dolls in the hallway to see how we show respect.

Thank you parents for helping your child complete the homework and turning it in on Friday. As the year goes on, homework will get more challenging and reading stamina will get longer.

There will be lots of papers in your child’s folders this upcoming Tuesday (both daily folder and Monday folder.) I will be sending home a pink paper about your child’s “All About Me” Project. Please take a look over this when you get the chance.

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!