Last week the kids ended the week working on their inquiry projects for unit 1, and I must say I was really impressed!! They worked really hard and we will be presenting their projects this week. I'll let you know when the projects will be up for you to view! Check them out at work under the photos tab.
In writing this week we are working on the elements of a story (beginning, middle, end, plot, characters, setting). We are combining writing and science to write our "Drippy" story's. The kids are pretty excited to write about the travels of their little water droplet, I told them the only requirement from me is that they need to prove they know what happens in the stages of the water cycle. For example, when their droplet is warmed it changes from a liquid to a gas and evaporates. These should be really fun!! I know that I said I would send Drippy home this week to decorate, but I actually want them to get a good start on their story first so that the Drippy they decorate will match the Drippy in their story, so I think we will send these home to decorate next week. I will include more instructions then!
Our room was bustling with excitement on Friday as we had just a couple minutes to briefly introduce multiplication. The kids were pretty excited! This week we are focusing on learning about multiplication as repeated addition, looking at arrays, and we will start learning our facts with 2's and 5's.
Multiplication as repeated addition: when you put things together in equal groups, you can also use multiplication. For example, 3+3+3+3=12 could also be seen as 4 groups of 3, or 4x3=12. In multiplication we think of "groups of" as the multiplication sign. When we are writing a multiplication sentence we always write how many groups x how many in each group.
Arrays: an array shows objects in equal rows. Arrays are everywhere! For example, this egg carton is an array. It shows 4 rows with 6 eggs in each row. To find the total number of eggs we put together the equal groups. So we could add (6+6+6+6) or multiply (4x6).
Homework: Reading Log, finding array's in our house (I will send home a description on what to do, but think of the example above with the eggs).
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I had the chance to see Clay, Carter, and Kendal play soccer this weekend and it was so fun to see them out there playing their hardest and being a part of a team!! Thanks for inviting me!! Way to go!!
Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, October 8th: National Walk or Bike to School Day
Thursday, October 16 & Friday, October 17th: No School-MEA conference for teachers
Monday, October 20th: Field Trip to the Alberta Bair for "School House Rock"
Code Word: MULTIPLICATION