The Betas keep chugging along! In math, we wrapped up our first unit on Number Sense and did an amazing job on the unit test! We had a well-deserved game day in between. Next up on the math agenda: Place Value! We’re starting off the year by focusing on fundamental concepts to set us up for future success.
In phonics this week we reviewed beginning blends (gr, dr, br, tr, cr, pr, fr), 3 letter blends (scr, spl, str, spr, squ), and diagraph blends (shr, thr)
We played Tic Tac Toe (5 in a row) by reading words with blends and also read a couple of short stories featuring blends. We also learned two new vocabulary words this week – strut and shrug! Our sight words this week were: were :), down, one and other.
This week we reviewed our writing so far from this quarter and selected one special memory to write about for our personal narrative. We completed our study of Strong Leads (strategies to get the reader hooked at the beginning of the story) and moved on to learn how to show, not tell and paint a picture for the reader using words. A couple examples of personal narrative read alouds from this week are: The Memory String and Owl Moon.
The Betas paired up to work on a hieroglyphic masterpiece so we can turn our room into a little more ancient Egypt! We began with practicing on a small sample piece of paper and then proceeded to scribe onto larger pieces once we practiced our creations. We hope to “build” our hieroglyph walls next week!
We are exploring the day in the life of different people in ancient Egypt. We learned about farmers and soldiers and we all agreed after reading that the soldiers’ jobs were much more demanding! We thought it would have been the opposite and the farmers had it harder! Even though there were great periods of peace and the soldiers didn’t need to fight, they were still training hard AND they were put to work lugging stones up mountains for a pharaoh’s tomb or digging irrigation canals for the farmland.
We worked on our Peep houses and painted them white to reflect the sun’s heat and help keep them cool. And after learning about a day in the life of an ancient Egyptian craftsman, we chose a trade for our Peeps and got busy making! Mini jewelry, bows and arrows, pottery, tools and even food to barter with. When we were finished making our goods, we displayed them in front of our houses so our things would look more enticing to others.And then we did some bartering! One loaf of bread for a watermelon? How about a rug for that necklace? A plate and bowl for this stool? The Peeps all came out on top with everything they needed and felt like they got a fair deal!
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