Week 21

#TeamJoy T-shirt Day

We were all united as a team to support our friend and his family!

Working Together

We are learning about the importance of friendship and working together. We all picked one color of marker/crayon to draw a picture. Everyone's picture was beautiful, but lacked some colors. Then we all worked together to add some colors to each other's pictures. The end products were more beautiful than before! Cheers to our team work!

Field Trip Next Week

On Tuesday, February 3, our class will go on a field trip to Nature Center in the afternoon. Please make sure your child has all the winter gear (snow boots, snow pants, gloves and hat) since we will be spending some time outside. 

Week 20

Our week was full of discoveries! We discovered...

• who Martin Luther King, Jr was and what his dreams were. 
• who Rubie Bridges was and why she is famous.
• where snow goes after it melts.
• that wet paper towels dry because water in them evaporates and go into the air.
• good tools to use when we are adding 2-digit numbers! They are base ten blocks and number chart.
• symbols for greater than & less than.

I am so proud of all the thinking that took place in our classroom. One of my goals for the rest of the school year is to encourage students to take risks to wonder and think. Great learning takes place when children are taking ownership for self discovery! When I step back and take a role of facilitator in children's learning, I never quite know what paths we will take to get to the learning goals. However, I know that the greatest learning happens on those paths. I'm looking forward to sharing our adventure with you!

Here are some pictures of us working on Martin Luther King, Jr. research.

Week 19

It was so great to have a full week of school. We enjoyed playing in the snow at recess as well! Please make sure that your child has snow pants and boots EVERYDAY.

Here are some highlights of the week.

Language arts:

• we explored nonfiction text features. 
• we practiced fluency with "The Three Bears" reading. We met with Mrs. Langus's class from Portland, Oregon via Google Hangout to read together. 
  
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• we continued working on writing about small moments in our lives. We are practicing to use interesting words in our writing.
• we wrote a fiction story about snowman. Some of us published it on the blog.

Math:

• we worked on fact families.
• we solved a story problem.
• we collected data on a Venn Diagram and interpreted the data.

Science:

• we explored more on solids, liquids, and gases.
• Charles, the Dickinson County Naturalist came and taught us about water cycle.

Please make sure to visit your child's blog!

http://kidblog.org/MrsDeGrootsClass2014-2015/

Important Dates

Friday, January 23 --- NO SCHOOL
Tuesday, February 3 (afternoon) --- Field Trip to Nature Center
**I need two parent volunteers to go on a trip with us. Please e-mail me if you are interested!

Week 18

Happy New Year! It was great to see everyone's smiling face at school, even though we were there only part of the day & week... I have to say I was very proud of everyone going with the flow with the altered schedule and still having so much stamina working on their jobs!

I hope we will have a better weather up coming weeks. Here is what is ahead in each subject area:

Language Arts

• reading with fluency
• reading informational (nonfiction) texts
• incorporating interesting words in writing
• writing informational pieces
• comparing and contrasting events in texts 

Math

• number bonds
• missing addends
• fact families
• story problems
• 2 digit addition

Science

• properties of matter (solid, liquid, gas)
• Water cycle

Social Studies

• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Rosa Parks
• Ruby Bridges 
• discussing fairness, peace and friendship

Christmas Party

Before the break, we had a lot of fun at our Christmas party. Special thanks to Solomon, Lucas, Carter & Olivia's families for planning a great party. Also thanks to Indy's family for sending us some yummy treats:)