February 27 - March 2, 2012 WOW! March already???

We will be learning more about autism through our story this week when we read The Sound of Annie's Silence. Our video clip this week deals with three teenage boys & their stories of going through life with some degree of autism. Thursday we will have a weekly reading test over this story. Vocabulary has us learning words that describe our personalities. Vocab. lesson 19 will be due Friday & the test will take place then as well.

We're rounding our third week in our lit circle books. I'm behind in my grading of week 2 due to my absence for half of last week. I will be grading these when week 3 is turned in.

In science we'll be continuing to learn about our solar system. We are finishing reading lesson 14 in our books at the beginning of the week as well as checking over our work in the book. There is a pneumonic device that we'll be discussing & learning in order to remember the order of our planets. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos - yum!!! Ask your child what this stands for by the end of the week! We will be reading over informational charts about the planets & gathering data from them in our "Can You Planet?" packet. Hopefully our week will close by making a scaled model of our solar system on paper. 

We'll be busy, busy, busy!!!!

Storyworks - don't leave home without it!

Don't forget, you'll need your Storyworks magazine ALL week for reading!

NASA kids website

Check out this cool website for kids from NASA!
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/kidsclub/text/index.html

What's happening this week?

Now that we've had a restful weekend, we're back into the groove of things. We will not be having our weekly reading test this week. We will however still be doing our Vocabulary Lesson 18: Famous United States Words. Our packet will be due on Friday as well as having our test on Friday. We will be working on activities in our Storyworks magazine all week, so make sure you bring it each day! Hyperboles, tall tales, the greatest invention , and cats vs. dogs will all be topics in this week's reading class.
We are taking off into outer space in science this week! We'll be finishing up day & night, discussing time zones, and starting to learn about our 8 planets in our solar system. Check out Google Earth & see outer space, the moon, Mars, constellations & even your home on Earth! It's amazing what satellites have done for us.

Back to blogging!

This week we will take our last Pro Ohio test for Science. Last week's Reading & Math proved to be good practice for us. As many of you know, we will not be having Valentine's Day parties, as this is a district wide decision. Feel free to still come with Valentine's cards for classmates. The kids were asked to write down names of their classmates if they were interested in handing out cards.

Our reading story this week is Dolphin Tale, which many of the kids have seen the movie for. What a great story! Feel free to check out Winter on a live webcam as she swims with her tank mate & other friends. We watched her today & really enjoyed seeing her in action! Our test will be this Thursday as well as our new lit circles. Make sure you come prepared with your Storyworks,  lit circle book & lit circle journal on Thursday.

In science this week we are learning about what causes day & night. We will do some activities to prove what is behind this daily occurance, as well as discussing time zones along with this to see why different parts of the world are sleeping when we're awake. Our water pollution lab is proceeding along very nicely! This week we'll be wrapping things up in our water pollution lab. Seeing firsthand the effects of groundwater pollution  really helps us imagine a leaky landfill, yuck!