February 27 - March 3

Brr.... it was cold and windy today and I had several students without a coat or jacket.  Please remember to send your little ones with a coat on these cold days.

Here are this week's happenings:

• I sent home a little note about Dr. Seuss' birthday this Thursday, March 2.  Students are welcome to wear their pajamas that day, but please no slippers.  The PTA is providing cupcakes for all of the students and a Dr. Seuss story.  I usually make green eggs and ham too, but I may rethink that as I just remembered about the cupcake. Reading Dr. Seuss books this month would be a great way to reach the 100 book challenge and celebrate the beloved author's life through reading.
• Tonight is the PTA sponsored Talent Show at 6:00 p.m.--there will be food available.  I didn't have any students return a talent show form (that I was aware of) so to my knowledge we won't have any performing tonight from our class, but you can still come and watch our talented kids at East Elementary with your families.
• The spelling test will be tomorrow.  The list is on the sidebar of this blog and I sent home words last week.  We will practice them a bit before the test, but studying at home is always helpful as the lists of words can be difficult for many students.
• Spring pictures are this Friday, March 3. Only those students that send back money in the provided envelope will get their pictures taken.  This is not like the Fall pictures where all children get their pictures taken regardless of purchase. 
• Today we finally moved onto the Inca civilization. We learned about how the Inca's conquered many villages to grow their empire and how many had to move from their homes.  We also learned the the Incas built many roads, some of which are still "intact" today.  We concentrated on the vocabulary word "possessions" and learned that those that had to move used llamas to carry their possessions. We have a few more lessons about the Inca Civilization--we will learn about how they sent messages across their vast empire (Inca Runners) and will conclude with "visiting' Machu Picchu. Our next topic of discovery is Astronomy.  
• We are almost finished with Unit 5 in reading.  We have delved into opinion writing.  This week my students will write an opinion paragraph about oreos vs. chocolate chip cookies.  We also learned about alternative spellings for familiar sounds (example: /j/--spellings are 'j', 'g,', and 'ge')  
• In math we moved from measurement to telling time.  Today we concentrated on the hour hand and telling time to the hour.  We whizzed through our section today as we have been "telling time" during our math wall time for months now.  
• Thank you for supporting me with the behavior issues that we are having in our classroom.  I hope that you all took the time to look at your child's behavior chart and discuss it with them.  I didn't get a chance to comment on  those last week, but will try to do that so that you can help your child identify specific behaviors and talk about ways they can improve.  I always emphasize that it was their choices that caused the change, not Mrs. Armstrong's choice. We started a new one today and they will be sent home every Friday. 

Happy Reading!