Hello Jello!

We're wrapping up week 2, and we are learning a lot... even me!

I am going to work on spreading our at-home work more evenly throughout Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For instance, in science, I am going to try introducing a new topic on Thursday instead of Tuesday... giving us a full week at home to go over the material. Also, feel free to divide up Friday and Monday's material however you'd like. For instance, we went to the mountains on Monday, so we did a lot of Monday's material the Friday before. Please bear with me, as I'm work on getting the daily work load sorted out! :)

Spanish- Ms. Joanne is working on getting us pen-pals in Mexico! We will be writing them (in English) to learn more about where they live, their customs, etc. They also went over the drawings of their room... learning Spanish words for bed, books, toys, and the other things they drew!

Spelling-- We played a review game today. I also passed out material for List 3 for next week.

Grammar-- Today, we reviewed using “s” to turn singular nouns plural. We also learned that nouns that end in s, sh, ch, x, and z as made plural by adding “es”. We did an activity using “s” and “es” cards to form plural words.

Reading-- We had a great discussion about the Indian in the Cupboard! Even though this is a really tough book for their age group, the kids seem to be really soaking in the content and the vocabulary! We discussed the vocabulary words and went over the study guide questions, hopefully sparking more interest in the story. We are going to have a great time learning about Indian culture in reading class!

Math-- We played a great game with mental addition and dominos! We also previewed tomorrow's Teaching Textbook lessons for tomorrow and Thursday, learned to correctly write the date, and discussed the lengths of each month.


Science - Today was a information packed day!  We learned about the parts of a cell (organelles), and their functions.  Although we discussed many organelles and wrote lots of facts, we are more concerned with grasping the broad concepts than memorizing every function.  Don't let them stress over the details!  We all worked together to make a model of a cell, using Jello and fruit.  Yum!

Social Studies-- I think we are really getting the hang of latitude and longitude! Mastery is a beautiful thing! Next week, we are going to embark on an expedition... we will be putting on a skit about the Age of Exploration!

Writing-- We learned about graphic organizers help us get our thoughts from our brain onto paper. Then, we can put our heart and soul into our writing, giving lots of details and write a story or paragraph!