May 27 - 30th

On Tuesday we had a lovely post-Memorial Day ACES walk to the Arb!  Thank you to Mahir's mom for joining us on the walk!

This week we have been working on different styles of writing, including magazine articles and advertisements.  Some children wrote non-fiction pieces about animals, some wrote How-To pieces, and many worked on advertisements. They ranged from imaginative to futuristic to silly!

Over the past few weeks in Math we have really been moving along with multiplication.  It was first introduced and practiced most of the school year as repeated addition:

2 x 4  = 8 

We can look at this as 2 four times: 2 + 2 + 2 + 2   

OR

4 two times: 4 + 4

We are concentrating now on the basic multiplication facts and making them more automatic.  This week the children partner practiced with multiplication fact triangles.  This would be an excellent activity for the summer, in prep for third grade.

In Science we have continued along with our exploration of sound, by experimenting with different objects that you can actually see vibrating as they make a particular sound:

We have been hard at work all week with "Pinocchio" rehearsals!  The children are excited to share the production with you!

Our class giving their all during the Tug of War at the Ice Cream Social:

May 19th - 23rd

On Monday we made spring observations of our dogwood tree.  We used our senses to find out what was different about the tree in spring. We will also be taking measurements soon to see how accurate our fall predictions on growth were.

Pen Pal Field Trip!!

We were so happy that the skies cleared up just in time for our walk to Wheeler Park to meet our pen pals!  Thank you again to Nick's mom (and Jaye's mom for a portion of the walk!) for joining us on the long walk there and back.  Thanks also to Liam's dad and Siya's mom for meeting us at the park.  And big thanks to Arush's mom for sending in snacks for both classes, and to the other parents who also offered to donate snacks!

We took a different route back to Angell and walked through the lovely Nickel's Arcade:

Over the last month of school we have been exploring our unit on Sound, which has largely been supported all year long in Music class.  This week we made a web of various sounds made my humans, animals and objects.  We also became sound detectives and took a walk around the school listening for sounds and their sources.

In Math we are learning some pre-algebra, this week focusing on how to solve problems with parentheses.  Ask your child to explain the rule.

Some sharing from Mr. Berke:

May 12 - 16th

This week we continued our Poetry study by learning how to write our own Tongue Twisters, using the basic concept of alliteration: a sentence where all or most words beginning with the same letter.  See the bottom of the page for some of the children's unique Tongue Twisters.  Everyone had a lot of fun with this.

This week we released our butterflies in the Outdoor Learning Center!  See the videos below.

 This week we began our unit on magnetism.  We learned about Earth's magnetic field, and explored with several different types of magnets with objects around the classroom.  We learned that magnets can work through other materials, such as cardboard, cloth, and paper.

The children read the following book in partnerships and took notes:

In Math this week traced our hands and feet and calculated the area of each in square centimeters.

Enjoying the sunshine!