It sure feels like Winter!

Hello Families,

Are you staying warm?  It is cold!  Today we started the day by discussing the weather and the frost that many students saw.  They were excited to see this phenomenon and were talking about the difference between this and hail and snow.  Well, good thing the students are planning a winter party!  It is very exciting and we only have about 5 days to get it done!  These kids are up for the challenge.

The winter party will take place 
Thursday December 15th from 10-11:45!

The class has joined committees to get the many areas ready for the big day.  (Today we looked up that word together to notice that it does have two m's, t's and e's- crazy, eh?)  The committees are the sign-up group, the arctic wall group, the snowy tree group, the experiment group and the book making committee.  A lot of groups because they have a lot of cool things planned for them to do that day, next Thursday.  Here are the fun activities they have planned:

Cutting snowflakes to make our room a winter wonderland

Drawing and creating animals to go on both our snowy tree and our arctic wall

Reading winter stories

Writing our own winter stories in home made books

Frosting and decorating snowflake cookies (and eating them!)

Managing a snow experiment to see how fast it will melt, both outside and in four different types of ice chests

Eating the yummy surprise snacks that you parents are planning- thanks, we're excited!

We had a great discussion about the experiments we want to do with snow in a meeting with the third grade class.  Often discussion and other perspectives are just what you need.  The third graders brought up some points to help us think about the planning of the experiment and also gave us some new ideas of what other elements we could test at the same time.

Please stay tuned for the sign-ups that the students are writing right now.  I will post these and email you about all of this soon.   If you are free, we would love you to join us for the fun and to help the students in each station.  I really appreciate all of your help both in bringing in supplies and in coming to join in!

Lately we have been realizing how well our brains work to remember unique spelling words.  We have talked about choosing a word a day to study and make your own.  The kids have had fun sharing their word in class each day and spelling it for us.  We have been looking at the unique spelling of these and also the similarities in words where we notice teams that do the same job, such as wh, -ent, -tion, ck and oi.  What words have you talked about this week?

Another interesting topic students have been curious about is water vapor and steam and how the water gets up into clouds to become rain.  The student agree that water evaporates and becomes a part of our environment, but they also know that sometimes they can't explain exactly all of the details in this process.  The class becoming capable of having deep discussions and of asking great questions.  It is so amazing to hear how they explain their ideas and the vocabulary that they are making their own because of the expectation to describe what they mean fully.  This is the cloud that inspired the discussion.  What does it make you think about air flow and water vapor?

Here are some new equations that students have written as challenges for each other.  (I will add more- I thought I photographed the others!)  Great for homework.  Make sure your student draws how someone can understand how they got their answer.  A great way to do this is to think of a real world situation that the math equation relates to.  For instance with multiplication problems, what would make you have six groups of six?  What situation would make six people have six of an item each?  The last two show how two friends represented their findings.   Please keep bringing in your great work done at home!

Well, I want to get this published instead of keeping it in the editing mode.  More soon!  I hope you are well!  Love, Jennifer