Mrs Walas's blog

Dear Parents,

For the past two weeks we have been reading and learning about animals and their bodies. Some of the important ideas we have learned are:

Animals have unique physical features like claws, paws, fins, flippers, wings, beaks, etc.

Their features help them live in unique environments. Some animals like lizards are able to camouflage.

Animals move in different ways. Some animals can swim, fly, jump, hop, crawl, walk and run.

We looked at many interesting animals photos. The children really enjoyed this unit. I am sure that they will have a lot to contribute when you watch an animal show together or go to the zoo.

Have a good weekend,

Mrs. Walas

Dear Parents,

For the past few weeks we have been reading and learning about food and where it comes from. Some of the important ideas we learned are:
• Many foods that we eat are produced on farms.
• Some foods from farms are processed and then sold in supermarkets.
• Food comes from two sources – plants and animals.
• Parts of the plants we eat are roots, leaves, stem, fruit, flower buds and seeds.

Please talk to your child about these topics as you visit the grocery store together or while preparing a meal. You will be amazed at how much they have learned about food.

Mrs. Walas

Your child has been reading the book Force and Motion, Push or Pull?, and My Magnet in our unit of study on forces that make things move. We learned that a force is a push or a pull that makes an object move. We also learned that a magnet can pull, or attract, some metal things. Walk around your home with your child and look for objects that move by pushing or pulling. You might ask: Does this object require a lot of force or a little force to make it move?

To go along with the winter season we decided to take a look at some winter animals. Our first animal is a flightless bird known as the Penguin. We started our study by looking at how a penguin chick grows. A penguin chick begins life in some of the coldest areas of the world – Antarctica. After the chick hatches, the father cares for, feeds, and keeps his chick warm. The mother then takes over. As the chick grows, it learns how to survive in the cold. We learned terms like huddling, waddling and hatching. We also took a look at 4 different types of penguins – Rockhopper, Adelie, Gentoo and Emperor.

Read about Penguins

Your child has been reading the books The Senses, Baking Bread, and Using Your Senses at School in our unit of study on the five senses. Your child has been learning the following important ideas:
• We have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.
• We have a sense organ for each of the five senses.
• The five senses give us information about the world and our surroundings.

Reading Group
•    Introduce the sound ‘sh’ in words. Identified the sound in beginning and ending place.

•    4 new sight words for this week are -  can, and, the, pretty. We will be learning how to spell and use these words in sentences.

•    Short vowel study – This week we will consider the short a word family which includes words that end in at, ap, am and an. Word slides will be sent home for review.

Language Group
•    Discussed the four elements of a story.
        Character – person or animals in the story
        Setting – where the story took place
        Problem – Identified the main problem in the                       story.
        Solution – How the problem was solved.
It would be a good idea to use the same vocabulary  at home while reading a story with your child.

Math Group
•    Practiced telling time to the hour.
•    Counting coin combinations of pennies and nickels.
•    Addition and subtraction number stories.
        + is the symbol for add/plus
        - is the symbol for subtract/minus
        = is the symbol for equals to
2+4=6 and 4-2=2 are examples of number sentences.
•    We will be ending unit 2 this week.