Marvelous Monday

Questions for the dinner table
Practice skip counting forwards and backwards by 5.
How can you make box, touch, witch, and lunch plural? How about carry, baby, and body?
Why do spiders blow in the wind? What else can the wind do?
In writing, we worked out "showing, not telling." How did you use "step -by- step" in your writing today? What strategies did our authors from author share show (the importance of planning by touching and saying, and then sketching; using step-by-step details "Dad got in the car. He pressed on the gas petal and off they went. I heard my favorite jazzy music playing in the background and I swayed back and fourth in the backseat.")
Maria is having a party for 18 of her friends. She already invited some friends. She has 11 more invitations to send. How many friends has she already invited?

Thankful Thursday

Happy Birthday Stella! You are loved!

Questions for the dinner table
Which poems did you add to your poetry notebook? (Running Nose, Po-m, and/or Play Ball!)
How would you make "fairy" plural?
Today we explored audiobook, read aloud books, and picture books on the website getepic.com. Which books did you read? How were they different than the books in your book box? Did you read mostly fiction? Nonfiction? Historical? Poems?
Today was Teacher Ibura's last day. What did you include in her letter?
Solve 46-29.

Reading to some second grade friends

Proud of his math method

Class meeting: Share 1 word to describe your current feelings

The Kavanaugh taking lunch choices

Reading The Haunted Library series with Mr. Bober

Our friend teaching us about the robins living on her window sill. We've been watching the robin from a livecam from her house. So awesome!

We had a few minutes of transitional break. These four students choose to work in their math workbooks. #futurefemalemathleaders

Lost and Found: We went through our classroom lost and found today. These are the items that no one claimed. Please let me know if they belong to your child before tomorrow. I will put these items in the Captain lost and found tomorrow afternoon.  

Terrific Tuesday

Questions for the dinner table:
Who is Cynthia Rylant? How was Cynthia's life from long ago different from your today?
Share your plan for you realistic fiction book. What problem does your character face?
What is the plural for "fox?"
During math today, we noticed some "great mistakes." What great mistake did you see? Why was the mistake made?
Why did we paint during math today?
Spell the word "user"
Why is legibility important in writing? math?
We are finishing up our Make-a-do projects. What did you create? How will you use it?

Great mistake..check! Visual representation of the number bonds....check! Math journal....check!

Marvelous Monday

Shhh....Please remind your child that we are being vigilant this week to honor our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grader friends by being quiet in the hallways and mindful of our volumes in the classroom.

Questions for the dinner table
Solve: 27+ 8 = ____ + 10
Why was the nose running away in the poem, Running Nose?
What does "plural" mean? How do you make the word "penny" plural? dog? wish?
Why did we play hopscotch during math today? How does practicing skip counting forwards and backwards help you with solving expressions?

Family Support- Skip Counting
Interested in learning more ways to support your kiddo at home with math, try having your child skip counts by 10s, 5s, 2s, 3s, or even 6s. Once your child has a handle on counting forwards (i.e., 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, ...), have him/her skip count backwards (25, 20, 15, 10, 5). Then, try having your child skip starting from a different start number (i.e, skip counting forwards and backwards by 10 starting with number 6 would sound like "6, 16, 26, 36" and reverse "36, 26, 16, 6). You can even turn this activity into a family game called "count around the table." While sitting at dinner, each person around the table says one number in the sequence. Then shout, "REVERSE" and go backwards.

One of our first graders had the opportunity to participate in the play Annie Jr., last week. She's a star!

Joy + Learning = Happy Child 

Skip counting while hopscotching

Wonderful Wednesday

Thank you all for your quick responses on the permission slips to the log cabin. It was awesome! The students learned about life long ago in a one room school house. We would like to extend a big thank you to Concordia Seminary and Noah's mom (in Mrs. Chamberlin's room) for welcoming us on their grounds. 

Questions for the dinner table: 
Share how you could solve the following equation: 17 + ___ = 45
What are you making with your Make-a-do project? What challenges have your faced? How have your worked through those challenges?
How was school life in the log cabin different than school life at R.M Captain? Which would you prefer to learn in?
When solving challenging words, we all think about "what makes sense? what sounds right? what looks right?" Which strategy did you use during reading today?
Why do you read fiction? nonfiction? poetry?
Try to spell the word "use." Did you try "ues" or "use?" Which way looks like it does in a book?
During class meeting today, we completed the sentence, " If I could change one thing in my classroom, it would be..." Finish this sentence.
Who is the character that you are going to make a series of books about? Who is the character's sidekick? Where do they live? What kind of problems are they going to get into?
 How do you record 14 cents? Do you know another way to write this amount?

A few pictures from our week:

We took our building skills outside.
https://www.make.do/

Choosing supplies to build our creations

Hard at work

Rainbow snuggling up. It's been amazing to see how caring, considerate, and responsible our students are with Rainbow. Go kiddos!

 

Inside the log cabin at Concordia Seminary. The students learned about a structure built and used over a hundred years ago. Using this primary source to gain information about life long ago was powerful!

Ha! This is the best picture I have from the group. They're hilarious. 

An awesome field trip!

We had a wonderful field trip to the Museum of Transportation. Although the 85 degree weather came as a shock ("Mrs. McCallister, I am incredibly parched"), we enjoyed our time learning about modes of transportation from today and long ago. Thank you to our wonderful parent volunteers. We appreciate your time and effort. We are fortunate to have such a wonderful class community!

Tomorrow your child will bring home a wooden train and a free child's pass to the Museum of Transportation.

We started our field trip adventures by learning about different types of trains. We then built wooden trains (thank you parent volunteers!). 

We're flying to the our train ride...

 Exploring more trains. We learned about steam locomotives and diesel locomotives.

My favorite picture of the day. Childhood joy!

The sign of a good field trip. Zzzzz 💗

Other pictures from this week:

Book Club discussing the humor Cynthia Rylant uses in her Henry and Mudge series

Writers celebrate their finished book reviews

More sharing of book reviews

More sharing of book reviews

More sharing of book reviews

We had a grand conversation based on our wondering in this picture of a streetcar in Saint Louis. The students have grown tremendously by growing topics that they feel are worthy of discussing.