Elementary Room 1

May News

May is here, and we are approaching the end of the year. This month we are busy studying Dinosaurs and the continent of Africa. We will create models of dinosaurs using clay and paint. We will pretend to be archaeologists and dig for dinosaurs. Our book of the month is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We will create our versions of the story as a class. May will also begin the practicing of our graduation performances. We have parent teacher conferences in May. I look forward to meeting with you!

April Recap

April was a busy month. We focused on the Earth and what we can do to help our planet. We observed the lifecycle of a seed in the classroom this month. We gathered beans and watched them sprout on the windows of the school. The children loved the particular cooking project where we made trail mix. The children were assigned a different habitat to create and explore for homework. We spent the month doing fun science and STEM projects related to taking care of the earth.

 

We also learned about different lifecycles. We explored the lifecycle of a plant, the lifecycle of a flower, the lifecycle of a butterfly, and the lifecycle of a chicken. We explored the rainbow and discussed how rainbows are made. We learned about different types of clouds and learned about the water cycle during a science lesson. 

March Recap

March has come and gone. We had such an exciting month. We kick-started the month by celebrating Dr. Seuss. We spent the month reading and exploring different Dr. Seuss books. The class favorite was Fox in Socks. They loved taking turns reading the tongue-twister pages. We created our own silly stories and drew some silly Dr. Seuss characters. The rainforest was our main focus in March. We focused on the different animals called the rainforest home and learned about the different rainforest layers. Another fun subject was St. Patrick's Day. The children all created their leprechaun traps. It was so fun seeing how creative they got with their traps. 

We spent time in March exploring South America and the rainforests. We learned about the different rainforest layers and which animals live in which layers. We created a rainforest college as a class by placing the animals in their correct home. We made a rainbow bridge as a STEM project. Each group developed their rainbow bridge using popsicle sticks and cups. Enrichment was full of fun this month. We made "green eggs and ham," cat in the hats, and continued our ABC mouse learning journeys. 

February Recap

February has come and gone. We had such an exciting month. We spent the month learning about the continent of Asia and focusing on love and friendship. We discussed the Lunar New Year. The kids loved writing their names in Mandarin characters and loved learning about the Chinese zodiac animal. We focused on the book Little Blue and Little Yellow. We spent the month working on color mixing. We made green with blue and yellow finger paints and created our own mirrored blue and yellow mixed images. The children had a fantastic friendship party. They loved being able to share their gifts and valentines with their friends. Thank you to all the parents for providing yummy snacks for our party. 

Enrichment was so much fun. The children made friendship trail mix and friendship fruit salad during Cooking class. We listened to the music of Brahms and drew the sounds we heard as the music played. The children explored the contemporary Japanese artist Yoyoi Kusama and made dotted hearts. In Computer, the children worked through their personalized ABC Mouse learning path. Finally, we reviewed our Spanish vocabulary and learned new words.

January Recap

The cold weather is here, and it is time to focus on our winter curriculum. Firstly, we are all bundled up for our trip to Antarctica. The first animal we encountered was a huge polar bear and her cubs. We learned that Polar bears do not hibernate in the winter like other bears, and they eat seals and fish. The night sky was amazing the Southern lights also called (Aurora Australia), we painted it in art class. 



We discovered that 21 animals hibernate, and many animals hibernate for long periods. Example snails hibernate for 3 years and bears up to 9 months. Our favorite books we read were ‘I Am Love ‘and ‘I Am Me ‘both books are written by Susan Verde’ we also read ‘The Bully and the Shrimp’ by Catherine Allison and Kim Geyer.

December Recap

December is always full of fun activities. The month started with our trip to Europe where we explored Europe’s highest mountain Mount Elbrus. We continued to England to visit the Castles and were introduced to English traditional food. We traveled further visiting the many parks and animals, Alpine Ibex, Brown Bear, Eurasian Lynx and on course the Grey Wolf we learned that these animals can only be found in Europe.
 
We read The Listening Walk by Paul Showers and Stick and Stone Best Friends Forever, by Beth Ferry and Tom Lichtenthal.  Our Festivities started with the children discussing what to make for Holiday gifts, once decided we got to work.  During this time, we learnt about Chanukah, we played with dreidels, put candles on the menorah and read the Story of Chanukah
 
We made cards and had a visit from Santa, we exchanged gifts with our friends. January is upon us, and we fall back into our regular routine, Math, language, reading culture and homework.

November Recap

In November, we learned about Harvest and Healthy bodies. We discussed different ways of keeping our bodies healthy and what it means to harvest food. We discussed planting food and which foods we can plant and eat.

We reviewed our greetings in sign language and learned a few new greetings. We are implementing our learning by greeting our friends in sign language. The children learned about temperature tracking. We talked about temperature scales and how to read the thermometer for the daily temperature. We learned about the different measurements in Fahrenheit and Celsius. We spoke of the thermometer, the tool to measure temperature. We continued to go over our spelling words. Overall, they all are doing an outstanding job on their spelling tests. In botany, we reviewed and discussed the parts of a tree and labeled the details of the tree by cutting and gluing them on the worksheet. Our geography lessons are concentrated on the United States. We went over the interests of the turkey as our Zoology study and created our thankful turkeys in the Celebration of Thanksgiving. Our Harvest Feast was such a success. Thank you so much for all your support.