June 3, 2019

Hello Families,

It's hard to believe we are already in June! With being out of the classroom so often in the month of May, please remember we have returned to our regular routines of word work (orange words this week), daily home reading practice, and library visits on Wednesday.

All of our larva have now entered the chrysalis phase! Likely before the end of the week our Painted Lady Butterflies will be out of their chrysalises. While we wait for the final phase to complete, we are continuing our learning about different types of bees, with a specific focus on mason bees, honeybees, and bumblebees. We have been creating Montessori nomenclature books to identify various body parts that allow us to classify bees as insects. Additionally, we have been looking at various invertebrates and determining their various characteristics. Once the butterflies arrive we will be able to build our understanding to compare and contrast the two insects.

Additionally, we are finishing up our exploration of shapes. Quiz your child at home to assess their knowledge of various 2D and 3D shapes in the environment. Some questions you could ask include:
-   What is this shape called? 
-  How many vertices does it have? 
-  How many edges does it have?

We have revisited some of our mental math strategies and connected various strategies to subtraction! Students are sharing their ideas in math forums called number strings. During the forums, each child has the opportunity to articulate their "just right" strategy so we can learn from one another. The interrelationship between addition and subtraction is becoming more obvious through repeated practice!

We are also continuing our collaborative story writing work with our kinder buddy class. Last week we watched the cute short film called Dustin [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5yunhX3FIE]and worked with our buddies to identify the characters, setting, beginning, middle, and ending of the film. Tomorrow, we will begin our final story writing task with the kinders, starting with a mini-lesson on creative story ideas and endings. :)

Take care,

Lindsay Brown