May 8-12

Dear families,

We have been so busy the last few weeks in our classroom.
Here are a few of the exciting things we have had happening in room 109.

Science - We have three insects that we are caring for in our classroom: mealworms, painted lady caterpillars, and milkweed eggs.  We have watched our mealworms change from larvae to pupae and now we have several adult darkling beetles that we have added to our mealworm colony.  We  five caterpillars in our classroom and we have learned that our caterpillars will become adult painted lady butterflies. They are in the larva stage right now. We wrote an observation of the caterpillars today.
Lastly, we have milkweed insects that have arrived to us in the first stage of their life cycle as eggs.
We set up the habitat today. We are eagerly awaiting our first milkweed insects. These insects do not go through a metamorphosis, they will go through several nymph stages. We hope to observe them over the next 3-4 weeks. We still have one more insect that will arrive late this month!

Reading -We have been reading Non-fiction books in class. Today we read A Harbor Seal Pup Grows Up. We discussed how a seal pup is a mammal that lives in the ocean. It drinks milk from its mother. We learned what a time line is and how to read a time line. We have also read many short Time For Kids articles that have features of non-fiction text such as: headings, diagrams, captions, labels, etc.

We have started our insect reports. All students have chosen an insect to study, write about and build a model of at home. Many students have told me they have already started writing their reports. I have suggested that they take their time and not wait until it is the night before! In class we are continuing to write "All Abouts." We have been working on how to write an interesting, short title to a "chapter" of our non-fiction books. We will talk about writing with comparisons this week. If you have any questions or your child needs a book or article to help he or she write their report, please let me know!

In math, we have completed Unit 8.  Monday we took a unit test and the students did a great job! This was a unit that covered 3-D shapes, time to the half hour, addition and subtraction with 10, and composite shapes. Unit 8 tests will come home later this week. Please go over any concepts that were difficult for your child. We will begin Unit 9 tomorrow, which is a review of the entire year. Please look for the family letter tomorrow.

A letter is coming home today for Field Day which is on June 2nd. Please consider volunteering on this day, Mrs. Bellino will needs many volunteers to help make our field day a success!

Thank you,
Mrs. Scheck