Hello Families;
This week in Literacy we talked a lot about friends and how they depend upon each other. This was the theme of each of the stories we read. The discussions we had were great, this group of students really are good friends and do depend on each other. We talked about making pictures in our heads while reading and how the words that the author uses helps us to understand what we are reading. The stories we learned from this week were all fantasy, so we looked at what made each story a fantasy. For example we read a story about birds that were learning to fly, in the story the birds talked and each wore clothes, so we used these clues to help us identify the story as fantasy. Since we talked a lot about friends and fantasy, the children had to write a fantasy story about friends that depend on each other.
In math this week we continued to review many of the skills we learned in First Grade. We learned the money exchange game and penny cup addition. You could play the penny cup addition game at home, it is great with getting the kids to learn sums of 10. Simply take 10 pennies hide a few under a cup and leave a few out. The child has to figure out how many are hiding under the cup.
In Social Studies we created our own town named "Taylor Town". The children each made places to live, places to work and places to play in our town. We then meet and decided as a group were to place these places. We thought about this hard, we decided that many times stores and restaurants are close to one another and schools, homes and parks are near each other.
In Science this week the students had to make a pencil stand on its tip. This was difficult but with some help most of us were able to accomplish this trick. Ask your child how we did this.
The students started the MAP testing this week. We will continue with this next week. Enjoy your weekend!
Anne Taylor
