Earth Day Rocks

--The Earth--

--Parts of a Plant--

 --Plant Life Cycle--

--The 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle--

--Sorting and Graphing: Trash, Recycle or Compost?--

--Recyclable Marble Maze--

--Bird Feeder Craft--

--Planting Flowers--

--Reading Picnic-- 

Let Me See Your Beautiful Teeth

Today we had exciting visitors from the local dentist office. They brought in dental tools and cute props to demonstrate how to brush our teeth properly. 

They had a dinosaur who had been brushing his teeth perfectly and had beautiful white teeth. They also had a poor little kangaroo who had not been brushing her teeth well and had yellow stained teeth with lots of sugar bugs- oh my! 

After learning how to brush their teeth properly, they were able to brush the sugar bugs out of the little kangaroo's teeth. :) 

The dental hygienist taught us many important facts, like...

How many times should we brush our teeth?... at least 2 times!

What types of food are good for our teeth?... Apples!

What types of food are bad for our teeth?... Candy!

What do dentist wear to be safe?... Gloves and a mask

What tools to dentist use?... Mouth mirror

Review of what types of food are good and bad for our teeth...

Click here to see an exciting video on the song we sang while we brush our teeth!
Click here to see another exciting video on those sneaky "sugar bugs!"

Addition and Subtraction

Last week and this week we are focusing on addition and subtraction. Due to student levels being greatly different, you will see several different levels of work. Some students focused on adding just to 10, while other students were able to add double digit numbers with regrouping. 

To teach this skill, I use a differentiated instruction model from How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms by Carol Ann Tomlinson. It's a wonderful resource for teachers and I highly recommend all teachers to read. It's a quick read that I finished during my lunch breaks. 

This model uses a blend of whole-class, group and individual instruction. I begin by teaching a lesson to the whole group. Then I have students work individually, with partners or in a small group with me to pursue learning. After 10-15 minutes of studying, I have students come back together to share what they had learned as well as teach another lesson. We repeat this two to three times depending on our schedule for that day. 

--Addition--

For students who were working on adding double digit addition, they started the week with double digit addition with no regrouping. As the week progressed, they began working on double digit addition with regrouping. I highly recommend these two resource packets: 

1. Double-digit no regrouping

2. Double-digit with regrouping 

For students who were working on adding to 10, they started the week adding to five. As the week progressed, they began adding to 10. I highly recommend this resource packet:

1. Addition and Subtraction- Common Core

 

--Subtraction-- (to be continued as this week progresses...)

Subtraction 1-10

 

Subtraction 11-100 without Regrouping