Hello families,
I trust everyone had a beautiful long weekend!
A few reminders first:
1) There are still a few spots open to help with Festival on June 9th. You can sign up here.
2) Don't forget to RSVP to our open-house by June 1st. I've already received lots! Thanks!
3) Home toys stay at home, school toys stay at school. That is the policy! Please help us out by checking your child's backpack. We want to prevent items getting damaged or lost, and we want to promote active, inclusive play during recess. No toys also speeds up our transitions in the hallway. Trading cards are considered a home toy, but a ball or other outdoor equipment is usually fine. Thanks for your help!
This week we are finishing up our story writing and beginning the process of editing. Each author will receive an editing checklist that they, and a partner, will work through to ensure they have done their best work before I have my turn. I have already read all of the stories (many times), and they are very impressive! Many include dialogue, description and more detail than I had allowed room for! Here are some authors hard at work:
We also completed our May dictée - perhaps our last (we'll see). This will come home shortly.
In science, we have talked a bit about humans and animals, so this week we are focusing more on plants. Today I brought in some dandelions that I dug up, roots and all, so that we could check out all the parts of a plant. I also sacrificed some dying tulip heads so that we could see where pollen lives, up close! If you have tulips at home, encourage your scientist to go check them out - the interior parts are big and you can really see what's what.
Anyway, each scientist did a detailed drawing of a dandelion and labelled all the parts that we had learned. We also began a little experiment using pea seeds. We are just soaking them in a wet paper towel so that we can see what would normally happen underground. Ask your scientist about the results of this experiment in a few days!
In math, we are finishing up our unit on 3-D shapes with a big building project and some work on location. Today we did the building part, and we used all the small, medium and large boxes and other shapes that you've helped me collect throughout the year. My big pile of garbage is gone! I can't wait to sweep in that corner!!
The projects look cool, but we're only half done. Tomorrow we will label each item with the name of its shape. We have also begun learning some French terms to describe location - ask your singer to perform the "Sur, Sous" song for you! We already used these terms to help a partner recreate a block creation without looking, and tomorrow we have another super fun game to practice using these words!
Lots of fun stuff going on, and that doesn't include prepping for our big concert, or the new chapter book we've started reading!
Have a great week!
Words of the Week
Our final sound review for the year!
We have learned that many times, the final consonant on
French words is silent, and normally this would be true in the word “allons”. However, when the final consonant is an s, and the next word begins with a
vowel, we usually make a liaison. In
other words, we use the s to connect
the two words - it’s easier to say that way. This occurs here, in the phrase
“allons-y” (=let’s go).
allons-y, crayon, continue, rond, un pont,
foncé, long, onze, monde, ballon
Bonus words: ils font, ils vont