"Peek at the week " February 2-6

Wellllll it looks like we are in for 6 more weeks of winter. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Monday and ran back inside his hole. That's OK though, because the kids had a blast outside building in the snow this week!

Here is a peek at our week!

Math Workshop

This week we explored how knowing a fact like 5 + 4 = 9 helps us know 50 + 40 = 90. We know that 5 ones + 4 ones = 9 ones, so 5 tens + 4 tens = 9 tens.  Children know that adding a 0 is a 'trick' but we learned that it is important to explain this concepts using the terms ones and tens. This will be easential later in the year when we learn new ways to add 2 digit numbers. 

We also began adding 2 digit numbers to 1 digit numbers. We were able to see that sometimes we can create a new ten group from the ones! We practiced this on a ten frame mat- when children filled a ten frame they exchanged the ones for a ten stick!

Reader's Workshop 

We started a new unit in reader's workshop this week. We will be learning how readers can be brave and solve tricky words independently. A big goal will be learning to hold ourselves accountable for monitoring our own reading. We took a look at our tricky word strategies we learned about at the beginning of the year. Now that we are stronger readers and are tackling more challenging books, it will be important to stop and think about 3 things when solving difficult words: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense? 

We sorted our strategies into these 3 categories. Over the next several weeks we will be adding more strategies to our chart. We will have a heavy emphasis on making sure the words we read make sense. 

Science

This week we explored mixtures. First we mixed two solids together- salt and gravel.  

We learned that when two solids are mixed together nothing changes, and it is easy to separate the two solids.

Later in the week we explored mixing solids with water: salt, gravel, and tissue. 

We quickly saw that the salt "disappeared" or dissolved in the water. The gravel sank to the bottom, and the tissue floated to the top. We will be leaving a sample of each mixture out to see if the solids change from being mixed with the water! 

I am looking forward to meeting with all of you during conferences. I am eager to share all the great things your child has accomplished during the first half of the year!

Have a great weekend :)