Celebrate Freedom week was a perfect opportunity to focus on the first responders, leadership, and unity of the United States. We have learned through the lens of historical events how important each citizen (even as children) is to our country. We took time to appreciate all the people who have come before us and their contributions, as well as those around us that provide protection and safety.
Which also led to our fabulous new book, Eleven, by Tom Rogers. We began by learning important information about 9/11, the city of New York, and some scientific research done on the Twin Towers. The kids responded with open hearts to the tragedy of the event with inquiry and curiosity, and with empathy. We then began our journey with Alex, our main character.
As we have delved into the first two chapters, we have also discussed our habits as readers. What we do in the living room with Mrs. Forrest should be replicated with our Just Right books independently. You can ask your kids about how these habits are going, and specifically how these related to the books they are reading at home.
Habit One: Know your character by NAME and NORMS (their traits, habits, and usual behaviors). SLOW DOWN reading the first 1-3 chapters of any book. They may be "slow" with events, but they are FULL of important information about the characters and setting (ask about Alex's mom and dad in the book).
In math, we created number lines of all sorts and used them to skip count by different intervals. Open number lines are one of our favorite tools for representing place value relationships and showing different ways to skip count. We started with multiples of ten and moved all the way into the ten thousands by the week's end, connecting these skip counts with our Deca Tree problem from last week. One of our habits as mathematicians this year has been to discover strategies that we can generalize to other situations and problems. This helps us become more efficient and flexible with our work.
We applied our number line visuals to rounding numbers and talked about some real-life contexts when rounding numbers can be helpful. This is great to model for your kiddos when you're shopping, since we often estimate the total cost of the goods we plan to purchase. The pictures show some of our SBLC mathematicians playing a game called Reasoned Rounding that caused us to think strategically, logically, and have a little luck too!
In science, we started our matter inquiry by developing a definition and discovering the states of matter. We're familiar with solids, liquids, and gases and are starting to learn about the properties of matter that allow us to clearly define and classify. Our discussions have led to all kinds of questions about force, energy, and a mysterious 4th state of matter called plasma. We have much more to investigate in the weeks ahead!
Enjoy your weekend!
Jen and Jewellyn
Which also led to our fabulous new book, Eleven, by Tom Rogers. We began by learning important information about 9/11, the city of New York, and some scientific research done on the Twin Towers. The kids responded with open hearts to the tragedy of the event with inquiry and curiosity, and with empathy. We then began our journey with Alex, our main character.
As we have delved into the first two chapters, we have also discussed our habits as readers. What we do in the living room with Mrs. Forrest should be replicated with our Just Right books independently. You can ask your kids about how these habits are going, and specifically how these related to the books they are reading at home.
Habit One: Know your character by NAME and NORMS (their traits, habits, and usual behaviors). SLOW DOWN reading the first 1-3 chapters of any book. They may be "slow" with events, but they are FULL of important information about the characters and setting (ask about Alex's mom and dad in the book).
In math, we created number lines of all sorts and used them to skip count by different intervals. Open number lines are one of our favorite tools for representing place value relationships and showing different ways to skip count. We started with multiples of ten and moved all the way into the ten thousands by the week's end, connecting these skip counts with our Deca Tree problem from last week. One of our habits as mathematicians this year has been to discover strategies that we can generalize to other situations and problems. This helps us become more efficient and flexible with our work.
We applied our number line visuals to rounding numbers and talked about some real-life contexts when rounding numbers can be helpful. This is great to model for your kiddos when you're shopping, since we often estimate the total cost of the goods we plan to purchase. The pictures show some of our SBLC mathematicians playing a game called Reasoned Rounding that caused us to think strategically, logically, and have a little luck too!
In science, we started our matter inquiry by developing a definition and discovering the states of matter. We're familiar with solids, liquids, and gases and are starting to learn about the properties of matter that allow us to clearly define and classify. Our discussions have led to all kinds of questions about force, energy, and a mysterious 4th state of matter called plasma. We have much more to investigate in the weeks ahead!
Enjoy your weekend!
Jen and Jewellyn
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