Welcome Back! January 7-11, 2013

Happy New Year and welcome back. I hope you all had a wonderful break. As I write this blog, I think about how thankful I am to be working at Shorecrest and trying to make a difference in the lives of your children. I look forward to watching your children grow and develop over the next five months and try to make a difference in their lives.

I also want to thank you all again for your generous gifts and warm wishes leading up to the holiday period. It is such a pleasure working with your children and delight in seeing their enthusiasm for learning.

Here is our week at a glance. Please take note that Current Events sharing will begin this week. Students sharing this week include" Tuesday: Claire, Matthew; Wednesday: Noah, Stella DeFrain; Thursday: Nicolas, Rose; Friday: Nick and Stella Davis

Other Important Dates to Remember:

Parent Reader - Friday, January 11: White; January 18:, H. Coleman
Ident a Kid - Wednesday, January 23
Martin Luther King Jr Holiday (no school) - January 21
Grandparents and Special Friends Day (noon dismissal) - Friday, January 25
Oldie Goldie Book Sale: Friday, March 22

Here is our week at a glance.

Literacy
Phonics: change y to i and add es
Spelling Words: duty, duties, candy, candies, bunny, bunnies, fairy, fairies, pony, ponies, plus five high frequency words your child still needs to learn
Story of the Week: Horace and Morris But Mostly Dolores by James Howe
Vocabulary: decision, downhearted, friendship, discussion, exploring
Reading Workshop: We will begin our Friendship Unit: Examining Good Times and Bad Times. This is a thematic unit on friendship that encourages students to follow the friends in their series books through journeys consisting of good times and bad times. This is a way for the students to dig deeper into reading skills that promote the exploration of character relationshops.
Writing: Small Moment and conferring; New Year's reflection
Handwriting: Upper case and lower case letter: n, m, h, b

Mathematics - Unit 4
* Review ballpark estimates (rounding off numbers to the nearest ten)
* To introduce and practice the partial-sums addition algorithm
* Reviewing telling time
* Review Unit 4

Social Studies
An introduction to Australia/Oceania (the smallest continent in the world)

Science - Changes - Bubbles and FIzz: Observing a Chemical Reaction
Throughout the unit, students have observed some of the changes that occur when solids and liquids are  mixed and separated. They have also tested some methods for separating their mixtures into the original components. Now they have the opportunity to investigate some of the changes that can occur when solids and liquids react chemically with one another. In this lesson, students first observe what happens when they mix water with baking soda. Then they observe the visible chemical reaction that occurs when they mix vinegar and baking soda. By comparing these observations, students are introduced to the idea that some solids and liquids react with one another to form a new substance - in this case, a gas.