Week 22 in Review

Greetings from Room 119 and an unexpected SNOW DAY!  Well, we expected it since some of us followed the directions on Mrs. Doran's "How to Have a Snow Day" directions!  Mrs. D. didn't snap any pictures from our Readers' or Writers' workshop this week (she had planned to do it on Friday... oh well!).  Also, be sure to visit our blog and vote on what new pet you would like to see on our blog.  The new visitor will come on February 15th and will only stay through the month!

We started the week talking about Groundhog Day and learning a bit about the animals that live underground.  We even watched a little video from Scholastic! Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this year which means that spring is around the corner (though you wouldn't know it from looking out our windows today)!

 Our study of insects is going well!  This week we got new insects to observe and study, WAX WORMS!  Ask us where wax worms are found in nature and what they liked to eat!  Based on their diet, we would prefer being a wax worm to being a mealworm.  Check out a song we learned about the parts of an insect by clicking HERE or by playing the video below.

Our PBS community is growing!  Our bus drivers are now giving out tickets to those of us showing the 5 Rs on the bus!  We have an exciting Pay It Forward event coming up at our school and will have an assembly talking more about our plans on Monday (it was supposed to be Friday).  Mrs. D. added a sneak peek to our class FB page (if you haven't "liked" our class page yet, click HERE and do so for quick updates) of two movies that will be shared with our school and our PBS blog.  Go sign up for the PBS blog updates by clicking HERE.

 In math this week, we learned about extension facts.  If we know that 5+3=8, we also know that 50+30=80, 500+300=800 and 5000+3000=8000!!  We felt really smart learning this trick!  Most of us have fact families down, though we still sometimes forget that when subtracting numbers the BIG number has to come first!

Mrs. D. also showed us a tool from our math program on how to solve addition problems.  This is something she just introduced to us.  In the end she hopes that we will find the strategy that works best for us and that eventually our math facts will become automatic!  You can practice these on math websites (check out the LINKS on the blog) or on your i-devices (Mrs. D. posted a link of cool APPS on our blog, many that her own children love!).

Have you found that we aren't coming home with shoes, gloves... etc... We have not always been remembering to clean up after ourselves and items in the hallway (especially) are often turning up in our Lost and Found.  Be sure to come to school and check it out to see if any of our stuff can be found again!

Due to the snow day, we did not take any additional hearts home for the weekend.  Please keep track of an act of kindness we do on Saturday and Sunday and don't forget to work on those Valentine's Day boxes and cards this weekend!  Check out below or click HERE for additional pictures from the week!