Happy Snow Day!

I hope you all enjoyed our Valentine's Day Snow Day!  It was a great way for all of us to rest, be with our families and enjoy the snow!  My family spent a lot of time ice skating, sledding and even skiing!  We even built a snow minion!

We are going to have a fancy Love Fest for Valentine's Day today!  Thanks to all of your children who created some of the most thoughtful and beautiful valentines as well as brought in so many goodies for us to enjoy!  We will do some dancing, play games and celebrate the safe and nurturing community here in our classroom!  We are all so lucky!

I meant to share these photos a few weeks ago, (just realized they were on my cell phone).  During the month of January the Endeavor team worked in mixed groups to present a Reader's Theater connected to a country on the globe!  The presentations were amazing, not only the expression and fluency of the spoken parts but the props and acting by each student!  This activity gave students a chance to not only work independently on their lines and props, but a rich experience in cooperative learning and the importance of everyone in creating a final product!

Our President Share is off to an amazing start!  We have learned so many interesting facts about the presidents!  I have been impressed with the artwork students have created, their sketches are beautiful and accurate.  They have really captured each president! 

We have been presenting about President #22  Grover Cleveland to current President #44 Barack Obama.  Mrs.  Crowther's class has the first half of the Presidents and  by vacation we hope to have a timeline of Presidents lining the kiva!  Thanks for encouraging your children to use books!  

Our Colonial America Unit is up and running!  Our focus the past 3 weeks has been to gain an understanding of the early colonies of Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth.  We have been reading about the colonies using a variety of nonfiction texts, videos and paintings!  Are guiding question has been: Why did the colonists want to settle in the New World?  From our deep reading we are uncovering a wealth of vocabulary, an understanding of why the colonists were leaving their countries, the hardships faced by the colonists in their travels and their arrival in the New World and the successes that occurred to help the colonies flourish!  We are practicing the skill of summarizing as we read, jotting down the "big ideas" not rewriting the text!  After vacation we will be focusing on the 13 colonies and heading into the causes of the Revolutionary War.  Beginning in March we will also be working with Joan Robbins from the Flynn Theater to bring our learning of this time period alive through drama!  

Before vacation we will wrap up our Geometry Unit in math!  Our math vocabulary has expanded this month to include words such as polygon, equilateral, perpendicular, obtuse, acute, scalene, isosceles, diameter, congruent, similar, surface area and volume!  We have been working hard to justify properties of shapes like reflective and rotational symmetry, congruence, similarity, proper shape names, and area and volume!  Ask your child about it!

I look forward to meeting with all of you during our conferences this week!  I am excited to share the growth your child has continued to make here at school as a learner and to set goals together for the rest of the year!  Happy Monday!