Popsicle party!!! Thanks to the donors who helped us meet our Bowl-a-thon fundraising goal!!
Where in the World?!
This week, we sailed around our very own continent of North America, noting the landforms like islands and lakes, isthmuses and straits, and peninsulas and bays. We noticed that of the three largest countries in North America, the United States occupies most of the temperate zone.
Peninsula…bay…
We spent a lot of time north of the U.S.A., learning about the land the earliest people found there — like the biggest waterfalls, rainforests, bays…Here’s a link to some of the slides we looked at from Canada, if you are interested (we only looked at 1-14)… Alphas knew that the EARLIEST people were the PaleoIndians. We learned that in the year 500, Erik the Red, went on a journey West on a rumor that there was land that way. The Vikings had the most sophisticated sailing and navigation technology of any people of their time. They were the first Europeans to reach North America…tens of thousands of years after the first human beings got there. We know the Vikings reached North America first because they left sagas in their country about it, and archaeologists have uncovered ancient settlements and discovered carvings of Viking runes as far south as Rhode Island. Alphas had a lot of fun writing in runes…
What did you see when you went to Greenland? “I saw a hat…” Leif Erikson was definitely a trickster…
Alphas adding North America to their globes…
One tradition we’d like to keep up in Alpha is cooking across the world. This week, we made “bannock” a traditional Canadian food. We topped it with globs of lovely raspberry jam. People make bannock all kinds of ways – here’s a basic recipe (for a huge class) that we used – the students asked us to share it on the newsletter:
Bannock
- 4 Cups Flour
- 2 T Baking Powder
- 1 t Salt
- 1 T Sugar
- 2 Cups Buttermilk or H2O
- 1/4 Canola Oil
In Math…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
This week, we graphed the results of our Monster P&P and found that we all rolled very different numbers! We talked about how many people rely on data to provide the things they want and the services they need. They had a good time giving/taking our in-class poll. It was really fun to break out the coins and play “Collect More!” Alphas loved doing rubbings of their coins; they were amazed at all the details they could find on them! We started filling out our 99 chart with our banker of the day. This week, our banker was Scarlet. Each quantity of pennies got a different color.
“1 dime and 6 pennies”
Ms. Emma’s Math Wizards…
Started the week off by sharing some of our recipes from P&P. Lucky us, we even got to TASTE Malin’s recipe. We continued to explore kitchen measurement tools and discuss their various uses.
We continued working with different units of measurement when playing “Find and Measure”
We practiced a bit more graphing and analyzing data…
Number bootcamp and practice working with hundreds…
And finally, we brushed up on our fraction and geometry skills and made some picture pie art!
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes…
Alphas have a solid understanding of addition and subtraction and have already dipped their toes into place value, leaving us to enjoy a 4th quarter applying our knowledge and skills to areas like deductive reasoning, data gathering and assessment, and money! We started this by taking inventory of some of our table supplies with tallies. We learned some strategies to find numbers on the 0-99 number chart, and we loved playing a tally game with our partners.
“Ummm…how come Sky Blue table has sooooo many of the colored pencils?” “Ms. Kim, I think we need to buy some more orange pencils!”
Wow – Alphas can make their own gameboards! Tally-ho, everybody!
ELA
Ms. Kim’s group…
This week we played a game to practice encoding fluency, which is the ability to hear sounds. We shared our big goals from our P&P, We did this with the game we sent home for P&P. We wrote a gazillion words in our little flip books (their idea!), we listened to folktales that shared a common character: a wolf!
Ms. Emma’s group…
Started our memory books! I am SO impressed that every student wrote a paragraph this week, WAY TO GO!!!! First, we had to share a few facts about us as babies..
We learned about long and short vowels and did some sorting…
We visited the library…
And had a few spelling check ins…
In Other News…
Recess…
Soccer photo credits to Kristin, thank you!
Alphas taking care of each other by feeding the “sick” soup…
Creations…
