IT WAS A BLAST!!

We had so much fun on Monday! We got to exchange Valentines, have a special breakfast treat, and enjoy ice cream sundaes. The students really seemed to enjoy the entire day. We also presented our robot projects, the kids were so creative in using the different geometric shapes to create their robots.

We are going to have a math patterns test this Friday. Please continue to work on the patterns with your children.

We will be beginning our study of the scientific process. The students will be creating their own experiments and then presenting them at the science fair on March 22nd. I hope to see you all there.

Game Day was a blast!!

We had so much fun this past Friday with our game day. The kids got to share in playing their games and dance around the room to fun music.

The students also created a rubric for their 3-D robot projects. Having them create a rubric allows them to take ownership for their project. We also did a test analysis on the geometry test that they took last week. This helped them to learn from the mistakes that they made. Most students realized just how many careless mistakes that they made. The re-test was a huge success, many of our classmates went from failing the first test to getting a perfect score on the second test. I recorded both tests in the grade book, so the two scores will average out together. I told them that we would be doing this test analysis on every single test for the rest of the year. Depending on how the class does on the test, I will then decide whether or not we will have a re-test.

I sent home my newsletter last week that had a list of all of the students in our class for our Valentines Day party. Please remember that we are combining our Valentines Day party with our multiplication ice cream celebration. We will be celebrating knowing our facts with Mrs. Elam's class.

The geometric robot projects are due on February 14th as well. I look forward to these projects every year. The students are so creative with all of the 3-D objects that they find to use on the robots. Please remember that you do not need to buy anything to create these robots. Many products and toys found in the home are 3-D shapes. They may ONLY use 3-D space figures to make their robots.

Enjoy this Superbowl Sunday! Good luck to both the Packers and Steelers.

What a fun day!

We had such a great day today at school. We began the day with a lesson on geometric shapes and the numbers of faces, edges, and vertices of each shape. Then we went to our AR celebration where everyone in our class received an award. I want to give special recognition to Thomas and Taniah for being our highest point and percent earners. We also celebrated in our classrooms by playing games and dancing.

We will have a math test on Tuesday of this week on our geometry concepts that we have studied. Please make sure that your child continues to study their multiplication facts.

Want something to talk about tonight at the dinner table? Why not discuss the 25th anniversary of the Challenger explosion? They have read the book "Ron's Big Mission" and can already give you a little bit of information about this time. Talk with them about the "Space Race" between us and Russia. What implications did this have for the United States at that time?

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.

No school tomorrow!!!

Parents there is no school tomorrow. It is a teacher work day. CMS has extended the nine weeks through January 25th. This is to make up for the snow days that we missed. This will give students the opportunity to turn in some assignments that they may have missed. Some points are always better than no points at all. We have started our geometry unit and are getting to use the SMART board software with this unit. It allows all of our lessons to be very interactive and helps to keep the students actively engaged.

It has been great seeing all of the constellation projects. The students did a good job putting these projects together and presenting them to the class.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Today in class we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We used the SMART Board Technology to complete a lesson on our LCD projector about his life and then we watched a video on Discovery Education about Dr. King's accomplishments. The students really enjoyed this lesson and many of them showed their enthusiasm by checking out books from the library about Dr. King's life.

We also reviewed for our test tomorrow on graphs and coordinate grids. Check out the website to see descriptions about these curriculum items.

We still have students that have not turned in their multiplication logs. If your child has lost their log, just write up a list of all the dates they studied their flash cards and which facts they studied on those days.

I am currently having PEP conferences for all of those students that are on a PEP. Please make sure that you sign up for a time to come in and speak with me about your child's progress.

Snow, Ice, and Freezing Rain!!!

I hope all of you enjoyed playing in the snow yesterday with your families. My son Kale got to go sledding for the first time yesterday and he had a blast. We went "Southern Sledding" as I like to call it, meaning we used a pool float to sled on. We had a small snow ball fight and then went inside for some "snow cream". It was a really nice day shared with my family. The make-up day for this snow day will be January 17th. We will be celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on this day.

Today I woke up to an icy wonderland outside. It was very difficult to even get down my stairs and walk the dogs. I hope all of you are staying safe and warm inside your homes. Take this day to get some work done on your constellation projects and extra credit planet projects. Remember that these projects are due on January 14th. We will have a multiplication timed test tomorrow, so make sure that you are studying your flash cards.

Take care and have another wonderful day off.

The Phases of the Moon

One of my sons got a model of the moon that shows all of the phases of the moon for Christmas. I think I was more excited than he was about this gift, because I knew that I was going to bring it into school to show my students the phases of the moon. I brought it in yesterday and we watched as the moon lit up and the different phases were described on the CD as was the history of the moon. The students gave a lot of "cools" and "neat". It was good for them to get to see the phases and how they transitioned from one to the other. We have also started our moon observations in our observation log in the lap books. We began on January 4 with a New Moon cycle. They were able to see yesterday how it moved into a Waxing Crescent phase. We will continue to look at all of the cycles of the moon, so they can see the complete one month cycle.

The movie afternoon was a lot of fun. We did not get to finish the movie, however we will get those students together that paid for the movie next week and we will allow them finish. Thank you for your continued support.