Ask Me About Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Today we studied a photograph of the Grand Canyon.  We talked about what the word grand means, and what a canyon is.  We are learning about landforms, so we took a virtual field trip around some of the most beautiful landforms in the United States.  I heard an awful lot of ooooohs and ahhhhhs, and "I want to go there" when we watched this!  It might even be better than Disney World!

Ask me to tell you what a landform is and is not.
We practiced retelling today with a simple story by Pat Hutchins called Where, Oh Where, Is Rosie's Chick.  This is a sequel to Rosie's Walk!  We practiced retelling using the characters' names, the setting, the problem or how the story got started, the events in the story or middle of the story, and the ending and how everything worked out.  In retelling, students are telling key details from the story in order.  We used our hand as a way to remember what to include in the retelling.  

We started planting today.  We are growing a bunny garden.  Don't get excited, we are not growing bunnies, but instead food bunnies would eat.  Since it's the winter, we will only watch our garden sprout and begin to grow.  We dissolved dirt pellets in water.  This was the most exciting part!  The dirt "brownies" expanded and eventually made a good amount of dirt.  By the way, dissolved and expanded were your kids' words.  I'm always impressed by the words these friends know!
In math, we measured our shoes.  We used cubes and found out how long our foot is.  Then we compared our foot to others to find a foot that was the same length, longer, and one that was shorter than our foot.  Then I gave the students a challenge.  They needed to figure out how long their foot would be if it were twice as long.  They came up with three different strategies;  double the number, get the same number of cubes and add them to your measuring stick, and count the measuring stick twice making sure to count on the second time.
We also talked about counting accurately today.  We looked at arrays, circles and ovals, and scattered collections that could not be moved and talked about how to count and be sure you are keeping track of the count.  We know the number and our finger have to move together, but we talked about where to start and which way to go.  Ask me to tell you the trick to counting a circle of items.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe