Wednesday, June 15

 Hi parents,

The blog is back! I'm happy to report that the craziness has mostly subsided, as our assembly script is finalized, the Peace Train video is complete, our recording is done, report cards are mostly done, and, most exciting of all, the butterflies have started to emerge!

The students spent a lot of time observing them today. This is actually the first time I've done butterflies in the classroom and I was really nervous that they wouldn't make it, so today was a big relief.

In the morning, we did our usual morning work period activities, and then read Droon. We're going to read it every day just to make sure we get it finished. If your child has been enjoying The Secrets of Droon books, I really recommend trying to find them at the public library, or at Value Village or Goodwill, as the books are at a perfect reading level for grade 3/4 students, and there are over 50 books in the series.

This morning we did a skip-counting practice activity which you may also want to try at home.

Students rolled two dice. The first dice represented the tens place, the second represented the ones place for their 'starting number'. They then skip counted up from that number by 2's, 5',s and 10's.

This is a great exercise as it helps students familiarize themselves with number patterns and build a better understanding of numbers to 100. Everyone is pretty good at counting to 100 from zero, , because they naturally get into the rhythm of it. But a lot of students have difficulty starting from random places. Using a 100's chart as a visual aid can help.

The students did a quick writing prompt in which they compared butterflies to things that were very different from a butterfly. For example, a pickle, a tiger, or a rock. The catch was, they had to only write about similarities.

In the afternoon we did Daily 5, Gym, and a paper-folding art project.

Have a nice night!

Zac