The 3 Little Pigs STEM

We had so much fun today working on a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) project!  We read The Three Little Pigs.  Then we discussed why the first two pigs were gobbled up.  Afterwards, I presented a STEM challenge; build a house using only 12 Dots (a type of candy) and toothpicks.   They were to build a house that the pig would fit in and would be strong enough that the "Big Bad Wolf Blow-dryer"  would not blow the house down.  The children recorded our pictures and identified the faces and vertices of the 3-D shapes constructed.  They also wrote predictions of what they thought would happen to their house during the experiment.

ABCmouse

We are using ABCmouse in the classroom and now you can use it at home!  A letter was sent home with a confirmation code or password specific to your child.  This is a free tool for your child to use.  You can purchase a full membership, with more options for games and activities, but I highly recommend not doing this.  Your child can work on specific lessons that are assigned (he/she must complete one lesson fully before moving on to the next) and can work on skills in all curricular areas.  This is a great tool to use over the summer, too.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

April

This month is very exciting for our class!

We are finishing up our unit on Long Ago and Today.  We have looked at how people communicated, dressed, farmed, traveled, and even played long ago.  The children have had made many comparisons and have been very fascinated with this.  We are excited to visit Rosehill Manor next week.  This is one of my favorite field trips and a wonderful experience for the children.

Click on the link below to find out more information about the museum.

Rose Hill Manor Park & Children's Museum

After this unit we are switching gears back to Science and learning about plants, what they need to survive, how they grow, parts of a plant and conducting experiments.  We will become scientists and observe changes in plants that will be grown in the classroom, too!

We have been working on long and short vowels during Language Arts, as well as strategies for how to read unfamiliar words and using text clues to define words, understand what is being read, and to infer.  I am amazed at the progress of each child and where they began in August!  Please visit the Language Arts tab, parent tab, and student tab above for more tips on how to work with your child and activities/games for your child at home.

Last but not least, in Math we are having such fun solving math story problems, and representing addition and subtraction number sentences.  We will be visiting 2-D and 3-D shapes, again, and then moving back to story problems sometime in May.