September 24-28

Kindergarten: We looked at books about apple trees. Mrs. Baumert read out loud The Apple Pie Tree, by Zoe Hall. Then, we drew apple orchards using our oval, rectangle solid and outline tools in KIDPIX.




1st Grade: Mrs. Baumert introduced the author Norman Bridwell. His last name begins with B and that is important if I want to find his books in the "Everybody" section. We learned that Mr. Bridwell writes the Clifford books. Clifford was going to be called "Tiny" but Norman's wife encouraged him to change the name to Norman's imaginary friend. That is how the big red dog got his name! Checkout Clifford's online books!
http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/

2nd Grade: We discussed the parts of a tree using the Trees are Terrific website. http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/trees1/
Then, we diagrammed parts of a tree using MS Word and the callout tool.




3rd Grade: We took a walk in the woods virtual trip. The children were encouraged to explore Nature Notes to learn more. After the field trip, the students discussed a MAIN IDEA and some DETAILS for the topic woods. Some main ideas were plants in the woods and animals in the woods. Checkout the website for details. http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/woods/

4th Grade: Mrs. Baumert read outloud Polar the Titanic Bear, by Spedden. The book included actual photographs of the Titanic. We learned that these photographs are also called PRIMARY SOURCES. The students visualized one part of the story and drew a picture using KIDPIX.




5th Grade: We discovered the National Manipulatives Math website. Everyone learned how to find activities for their personal math practice.
http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

September 17-21

Kindergarten continued practicing mouse skills using KIDPIX.

1 st grade reviewed the American flag and compared it to the Mexican flag. They explored other Hispanic flags and countries using the Almanac and books. They drew Hispanic flags and stamped flags using KIDPIX.

2nd grade reviewed what a country is. They then learned about continents and oceans using the http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/World_Continents.htm website.

3rd grade reviewed Houghton Mifflin adventure stories. They then created acrostic poems with the http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/acrostic/ tools. Some examples were MULAN, FLOYD, and WENDELL.

4th grade researched Titanic using http://www.unitedstreaming.com/ and http://home.interlynx.net/~dclarke/Titanic.html. We discussed what their Titanic models should include.

5th grade began using http://www.studyisland.com/ for ISAT practice. We took the reading pretest.

September 10-14

Kindergarten worked on mouse practice skills using the DOT to DOT templates in KIDPIX.

1st grades learned about the American flag and drew the flag using KIDPIX rectangle tools.

3rd - 5nd grades discussed that America had 50 states and explored "Place the State" internet activity. We also looked at USA Atlas.

September 3-7

Monday was Labor Day so we all stayed home and celebrated with our friends and family! This week in the LMC we discussed our holiday weekend and family traditions for Labor Day.

Using the Index, we found information about Labor Day in the National Holidays book.

Some second, all of third, fourth, and fifth grades wrote an electronic postcard honoring a worker. We honored workers in the classroom, school, home and the community.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/games_quizzes/postcards/index.asp
Kindergarten and first grades listened/read stories about Community Workers! They also had fun taking a quiz after each story.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/commclub/

Everyone is evaluating the books we read last week. When the students return books, they classify them by LIKED, DISLIKED or DON'T KNOW. Most of the students made good choices and LIKED their library books. Keep up the good work.