Thank you to everyone who has been able to send in empty milk jugs! We need about 8 more, so please continue to send more in as you finish them and I will let you know when we have enough. Thank you to Cordelia's mom, Susan, who is joining us for weekly Math help. We have a parent coming in four out of five days each week, which is more parent participation than I've ever had! We are very lucky to have so much support.
We had a terrific time on our field trip to the Jiffy Mix Factory in Chelsea! We were able to learn about how a factory works, and see it in action. This was our introduction to our social studies unit on goods and services. We also were able to see many rural areas in Chelsea on our drive in. Thank you to Takuto's mom, Satako, and Eric's mom, Mary, who joined us as chaperones on this trip!
Enjoying mini muffins!
Unfortunately taking photographs was prohibited in the factory itself, but if you would like to take a peek there is a "virtual tour" available under the "about us" tab on the Jiffy website: http://www.jiffymix.com/ Luckily, I was able to get a few shots of the kiddos in their hair nets before we entered the plant. I couldn't resist including all the shots, although I must tell you that some of your children did NOT want to be photographed, and made sure to duck out of my view when they saw the camera! :)
The children had a lovely time at Timber Town Park after lunch!
We returned from our field trip to discover that one of our fish had babies!! By the end of the day there were 25 guppies, but sadly only six survived. We are trying to take good care of them! This tied in nicely with our Life Cycles unit in science and the children are very curious about learning more about how fish are born, especially since we were all surprised by this!
We will be exploring this topic in the coming weeks.
In Math we are looking at patterns with doubles facts (shaded in purple) and +9 facts (shaded in green). We are also talking about "Fact Power", which is using the facts you know to help you solve other facts.
For example: If you know fairly quickly that 5 + 5 = 10, then when you see
5 + 6, you can think "5 + 5, just one more!"
We are working on strategies with +9 facts as well.
9 + 1 = 10
9 + 2 = 11
9 + 3 = 12
9 + 4 = 13
etc.
We listed all the sums from 1 to 9 and discovered that when looking at the sums, the digit in the ones place is always one less than the number being added to 9.
Another trick is as follows:
When you see 9 + 4, instead think "10 + 4, but just one less!" Most children know their +10 facts more automatically than +9, so this is a helpful strategy for many of them to use.
Like anything, we are exploring a wide variety of strategies on a daily basis and children love to share their own strategies by coming up to the board and demonstrating. I always try to encourage the children to try out new strategies when they are doing their independent work, because they may find one that really works well for them. However, I make sure to tell them that there is no strategy that is better or worse, and much of it depends on individual preference and how all our brains work differently!
Playing our latest Math game, "Doubles or Nothing":
This week we had "Author's Chair" for the first time, where students shared finished pieces of writing with the class. We worked as an audience on giving constructive feedback as we had practiced last week with writing buddies. This week's author's were Jaime, Conrad & Sam.
We also had two guest readers this week:
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