We enjoyed the story Going Home. It is Dr. Mill's Book of the Month and it struck a special chord in all of us. It made us think of the many places we call home. Our families are in Georgia, New York, Ohio, Alabama, Michigan, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Costa Rica, Mexico and Guatemala. The children wrote travel stories about the special times they have spent visiting their relatives.
Mrs. Pennington was missing this Halloween! In her place was substitute teacher, Miss Viola Swamp! She never smiled, attempted to make the children do dull practice work ALL day, and spoke with a scratchy voice. The class was happy to have Mrs. Pennington back the next day.
The surprises kept coming! Who should appear at our door but a crusty old pirate named Captain Jack! He told us a bunch of good tales and even brought us some treasure --- to be eaten at home.
After our favorite pirate left, we carved our class pumpkin. We decided that an estimate of 5 seeds in a pumpkin was too few and that 1 million was too great. We decided a few hundred is a better guess and we'll count to see how close we come.
The next day we grouped the seeds in ones, tens, and hundreds and found out we had 462 seeds to toast!
Here are the rules . . . plain and simple!
The children all took turns making a stack of cookies and recorded how many cookies could be stacked before a "tumble" occurred. Sebastian (pictured) achieved the tallest stack with a total of 19 cookies!
Our results were averaged and shared with our friends all over the U.S. We enjoyed using estimating and counting skills before we finished our project . . . YUM!
A homework packet will go home every Monday. The packet includes a week's worth of practice and is not meant to be completed in one night. It is due on Friday morning. Your child may choose how he or she practices the sightwords each and every day. Your child should be reading every day and keeping up with the reading log. If your child would like to do any type of independent project, please let me know and I will help out with supplies and resources if they are needed.
Keep homework time light and happy. Provide your child a snack while working. Give lots of encouragement and help as needed! Homework should not be tedious or involve any tears or hard feelings. If you have any problems, please let me know and we'll figure something out.
We have an exciting project coming up in Spring of 2007. We will study the living things on our school grounds and share with friends around the country.
Last year, we formed small groups and studied the living and nonliving features in square meter areas around our school yard. We wrote up reports and shared our data with first grade classes in Virginia and Arizona in addition to schools all around the world. You may click on the following link and view our project report:
http://www.k12science.org/curriculum/squareproj/asp/viewdetails.asp?id=113
For more information about this great project, go to:
http://www.k12science.org/curriculum/squareproj/student_gallery.htm
Purple folders are very important! The children know that it is a daily link between home and school. Inside you will find a behavior form, a reading log, homework, special notes, and a 
variety of learning aids. Please review it each and every day with your child and help your child get in the habit of returning it to school each morning with an updated reading log and your signature on the behavior form. Keep the homework packet stored in the folder. All homework is due on Friday.
Many expected and unexpected rewards come when reading logs fill up! Be on the look out for pizza certificates and your child's budding, brilliant mind!
Base-10 Exploration
Cameron and Jason make numbers using objects, pictures, numbers, words and base-10 blocks.
