Weekly update 2/7/14

I hope everyone has had a nice week!  We have 1 more week until vacation!
A few important things:
**Right now the 100th day of school is next Wednesday.  Next week, I will send home a sheet to write about 100 things you've collected.  Start thinking about or start collecting, 100 small items.  Examples are cheerios, legos, doll shoes, crayons, pennies, etc.  If you collect this weekend, you won't have to be looking for them next week and you'll only have to complete the form.
**Going home today is the valentines information.  On Friday, February 14th, we'll be having a Valentine's/Friendship day.  We will count candy hearts, write about people we care about, do a craft activity, and pass out valentines.  If you choose to pass out valentines, the information is going home today along with a class list.  Please keep in mind that we can not pass out candy to eat.  If candy is brought in to pass out, it will all have to go home.
**You may have had a chance to use Tumblebooks when you were here for literacy morning.  You can also use it home too!  Go to tumblebooks.com using the username mspaulding and the password books.

What's happening in room 235?
In literacy, we continue to work on writing our opinion letters.  Some of us are writing about characters…others about our favorite parts…and some of us are writing about parts that are funny.   We are using a checklist to help keep us on track and though we just started this recently, we will continue to work on it for another month or two and the end products will be amazing!  Thank you to those that came to literacy morning…I'm glad you had a chance to see some of their writing!  In reading workshop, we are working on pourquois.  Pourquois teach us why the legends tell us something happened.  For example, ask your child why chipmunks have stripes.  We also continue to work on writing our own fables before we type them and add illustrations.
In math, we are still working on addition strategies such as the open number line, ball park estimates, and partial sums.  We will be looking at length and data next week.
In social studies, we have finished our Mexico unit and have been reading Time For Kids about thunderstorms and are working on researching, typing, and illustrating an alphabet book about Mexico.
After vacation, we will go back to science and work with ramps.  We will investigate how ramps work, what makes cars go faster or slower down the ramps, and then make our own ramps.  I'm looking forward to it…students usually love this unit!

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. DeKing