Looking ahead to our week of learning...

I am so excited for our week ahead!  Here is a brief overview of all we are setting out to accomplish this week:

Literature:  Sarah Plain and Tall (if your child still has this book at home please pack it in their backpack for tomorrow!)  I am looking for a mailing address for the author Patricia MacLachlan so we can write to her at the end of our book study.  If you have greater success than I had searching the internet, I would love to get her address!  We are still doing our read aloud of Cricket in Times Square, and I am so curious which book will come out as the class favorite and why- it will be fun to see as the different plots develop.  We will be having a coffee talk over both books, so I will update when we get closer to completion!


Math:  We will continue to practice Multiplication (through repeated addition, pictures, facts, word problems, the commutative property, number bonds, arrays) and introduce the concept of division (Are we sharing or grouping, writing a standard equation, partitioning a total group or set, etc)

Science:  The Water Cycle!  We will be completing labs to take a closer look at each part of the water cycle:  evaporation, condensation, precipitation, collection.  We will be identifying and defining the main types of clouds, creating a cloud watcher, an indoor water cycle, and culminating our week on Friday with a guest speaker, Ms. Alford's father, who is a Hydrologist.

History:  We are continuing to explore Ancient China- the geography, religions, contributions, societal structures, and many more aspects of China.  We will even try our hand at writing some Chinese characters! 

Spelling:  We will have 30 words this week and in addition to our words we will have a handwriting focus.  This weeks focus will be :  Keeping the letters on the baseline- in class we say "Watch for the dippers and the high flyers"!  There will be a separate handwriting grade on Friday's spelling test that will be only for this handwriting goal.  Next week we will have a new handwriting goal for the week.

As we close here are some fun songs you might hear around your house this week:

Water travels in a cycle, yes it does
Water travels in a cycle, yes it does
It goes up as evaporation
Forms a cloud-that's condensation
Then falls down as precipitation, yes it does
YEE-HAW!


And our 3's chant:

leader:  3, 6, 9
echo:    3, 6, 9

leader: 12, 15, 18
echo:   12, 15, 18

leader: 21, 24, 27
echo:   21, 24, 27

EVERYONE- nice and loud :)  :  30!!!!