Subtraction Word Problems, Energy and Things That Are Magnetic/Non-Magnetic

We worked on subtraction word problems this week. Here is one problem we did this week. It says “Samari has 19 pencils. He gave Grayson 8 pencils. How many pencils did Samari have left?”

In science this week, we learned about a lot. We started the week off learning about things that are magnetic and non-magnetic. I gave each student  a magnet and they went around the room seeing which objects in our classroom was magnetic and non-magnetic.

We also learned about heat energy, light energy, and sound energy. Here is the foldable the kids created to glue in their science journals.

For our sound energy lesson, I had 3 cups filled with water all at different heights. I put food dye in there just to make it a little bit more fun but maybe I shouldn’t have picked red. The kids kept saying it looked like blood. Lol. After a couple of minutes of arguing about if it was blood or not, they realized it was just food dye. I used my scissors to tap it against the glass to make a sound. The kids realized that each glass made a different sound. They then made a connections that the amount of water in the glass made the sound different. One was a high pitch, one was a medium pitch and one was a low pitch.

Finally...Easy Breezy Weather!

 In science, we have been working on force and motion. More specifically on motion. We observe objects and identified them in categories of things that spin, slide or roll.

 In math, we have been working on finding missing addends for the past one week and a half. The kids are getting really good at it. Ask them to teach you the clapping trick I taught them in school to find the missing addend! Check out of new updated turkey bulletin board.

Yesterday, we worked on finding a missing number in a subtraction problem. This concept was a lot harder to grasp for the children but eventually they got the hang of it.

These are our new VLA sight words. We have been working on these words for the past 2 weeks.

Our countdown until Thanksgiving break begins! Only 7 more school days and 8 more days until we get to stuff ourselves with delicious Thanksgiving food! We will be doing a lot of class assignments about Thanksgiving both in Mrs. Skalaban’s and my class.

Spooktacular Week

What a fun-filled week with events. This week really flew by for me. This week was special because it was red ribbon week. Here are some of our kids participating in the theme days for red ribbon week.

We finished our unit on odd and even numbers and started word problems this week in math.

In science, we started our unit on force and motion. We will be learning about movements of objects that spin, roll, and slide and then we will work on push and pull.

We had our monthly SCIENCE BUDDIES this Thursday. The kids looooove when they get to go to science buddies. This time, our 5^th grade science buddies did different experiments with our little ones with different Halloween candies. These are very easy experiments you can do at home with your child with some of the Halloween candies collected over the weekend. Ask your child about what they did! A cool one is if you put M&M’s and Skittles in water, eventually the M’s and the S’s on these will float up on top of the surface.

Our fabulous librarian Mrs. Richey scheduled a spooky story teller to come to Summitt and tell us some spooky stories on Friday. The kids really enjoyed this. 

On Friday, we were called over the intercom to evacuate our classroom and go to our safe in shelter place in the hallway because of the possible tornado warning and the bad weather condition. The kids were such troopers. We were in the hallway for over an hour. They did great listening to my directions and staying calm. But the weather didn't stop us! We still had our Halloween party. Thank you to all my parent volunteers who came to join us!!!

We created our bats this week in VLA. We haven’t had the opportunity to read our bat poem yet because it’s been such a hectic week but we will this upcoming week.

Please make sure to check out the new November calendar going home in daily folders this week. Lots of events. I will be out Thursday and Friday!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

What gloomy weather! This weather makes me not want to do anything but lay in bed all day. We really do need the rain though. Hopefully it will clear next week so we can go outside to play again instead of having indoor recess.

 In math, we have been working on skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. Look at the kids hard at work.

 We learned about spiders. Spiders have 8 legs, 2 fangs, make spider webs, have 2 body parts, and hatch from eggs. I love the Halloween themes going on around the classroom. It puts us in the Halloween spirit.

 We finally received our new class pet. He is a box turtle that likes to pop his head out often to see what we are doing in class. We will have him for 2 weeks before I have to return him.

 In Mrs. Skalaban’s class, the students learned facts about bats. Look at how cool they turned out to be. The students have also been learning about fall leaves and have been working on many writing assignments around the season of fall.

It makes me very proud to see the kids produce sentences independently in Vietnamese Language Arts. Even my non-viets are producing their own sentences independently. Kids really do absorb quickly what they are taught. This is only our third time writing in our journals using our weekly sight words. We have been practicing reading a fall book in class that they kids are enjoying. 

-I will be out the morning of Oct. 29th but will be back for the afternoon.

-Our Halloween party will be Oct. 30th at 1:45-2:30. Thank you for all those who have already brought in Halloween treats for the party! 

Fact Family and Fire Safety!

This week in math we have been practicing simple addition and subtraction problems within a fact family. I was really excited to bust out my fact family chart I purchased last year. The kids really had a fun time with it. We used it daily during the whole group teach before dismissing into doing the assignments at our tables. I will be placing this into the math center after I laminate the numbers. If there are any volunteers who would like to laminate and cut out the numbers for me, that would be great!

We updated our math bulletin board in the classroom. Why not do something Halloween related since Halloween is coming up?! These candy corn came out to be really cute. Look at how neat some of my students are writing. The kids know how I feel about MESSY work! If it's messy, they have to redo it! Rushed and messy work in Cô Tracy's class is not allowed =P

So in VLA, we have been working on the words “con trai” and “con gái” which means “boy” and “girl.” The students got to create their own monster and pick a gender for the monster and then complete the sentence for me. It says “I am a...”

Con trai= boy

Con gái= girl

Đi= go

Là= is

Con= I (talking to an adult)

Em= I (talking to someone near their age, friends)

In the library this week, Mrs. Richey read us Creepy Carrots! The kids really enjoyed the books and made their own creEeeEeEePy carrots. Fun book!

Mrs. Yarborough and Mrs. Farnsworth were good sports about putting on a firefighter’s outfit. They said that the outfit was verrrry heavy but that's how it keeps the firefighters safe from fires. First grade learned about fire safety on Friday. The firefighter taught the kids what they should do during a fire and how to be safe. He said that if you are upstairs and can’t get down, throw a stuffed animal down from the window and when the firefighters get there and see a stuffed animal on the ground, they will know that there is still a child stuck up in the room where the window is.

Please sign-up for our Halloween party if you haven’t yet! The sign-up is in front of our classroom.

SOARING SKYWARD DAY!

It’s October, y’all! Mrs. Skalaban and I have twinning Frankenstein doors to welcome October. This is going to be a fun-filled month. We will have our first class party at the end of the month for Halloween. In front of our doors are Halloween sign-ups for different Halloween treats we will need for our party. Please stop by and sign up for something J

We had such a great Soaring Skyward. I can honestly say that it was one of the funnest days we’ve had this year by far. The kids were so well behaved taking in consideration of the change in our daily routines. Even though we weren’t learning inside of the classroom, we learned so much about flight from so many different stations and so many different presenters that came. Soaring Skyward only happens every other year so next time these children will get to do Soaring Skyward will be when they are in 3^rd grade.

Remote Control Helicopters: We started our day in the gym watching remote control helicopters and drones in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The men taught us about the different parts these machines have and how it works.

Birds of Prey: Pre-k -2^nd grade class got to learn about different birds. We had to be very quiet or else it would have scared the birds. This station was really cool because the birds would fly over our heads. We even saw a kookaburra! 

Hot Air Balloon Tissues: During this station, we got to make a hot air balloon out of tissue paper as a class. We learned what cool air and hot air does to a hot air balloon. We even got to see our class made hot air balloon land on Mrs. Richey’s head! Thank you Mrs. Richey for joining us and helping us in creating our hot air balloon!

STARFlight Helicopter: At 1:00 on Friday, we went outside by the track to watch the helicopter land on Summitt’s track. This was a very exciting part of our day. We got to meet the pilots, take a picture in front of the helpicopter and see a real live helicopter! 

Hang Glider: We then stopped by the hang glider. The kids learned new vocabulary like FLIGHT, ROLL, and YAW. These words are words that describe the movement of the hang gliders.

 Bubbles Dance Party: Last but not least, we ended the day with our new 5^th grade science buddies in a big ol’ dance party! I had so much fun “whipping” with the kids and doing the thriller. It was so good to see kids just being kids dancing their little hearts away. Some of the kids have made such great connections with their science buddies they had just met 3 days ago. We will have science buddies every last Wednesday of each month.

What a Busy Week!

This has felt like the longest week everrrrr. We had Y-Ties sales starting, Back-To-School Night, fall picture day, first grade fees due, testing for their reading level, and the list goes on! On top of that, I had 7 hours of meetings this week. It felt really good to be able to sleep in on this lovely Saturday morning.

In science this week, we continued learning about our 5 senses. We did a hearing and smelling game. The kids had so much fun. On the smelling game, one of the cups had garlic in it and I was cracking up seeing their reaction after they had smelt it. The faces they made were priceless! Some guessed it was stinky socks, barf, and “fart.” 

 In math, we worked on addition and subtraction number sentences. Later on this year, we will work on work problems using addition and subtraction. We will be comparing numbers next week.

In VLA, we have been working on our new sight words. You can see them in my pocket chart in the picture below. So far this year, we have worked on accents and colors. This is our first week learning sight words.  Eventually, we will start writing sentences using our sight words.