What a week this will turn out to be! Tu-tu Twosday, Invention Convention, Presidents Day, and vacation.
Friday is the Invention Convention. Children will bring their inventions and posters to the Common Room when they get to school. Please have your child bring in the permission slip stating that they can participate in the Convention. If you need another one, just ask. If there is a snow day, they will bring it in on the Monday we come back from vacation.
Today we talked a little about President's Day and we read a story about Abe Lincoln.
The children have been learning about the Iditarod Sled Dog Race in Alaska. So far we have learned the history as to why the Iditarod was started. They picked their veteran mushers today and will be researching that person and making a poster about them. Then we will pick a rookie musher to follow as well. The children will be tracking their mushers as they travel throughout the race, they will be writing to the K-9 Journalists- Dogs who post information about the race, and they will be putting on a play to learn more about the rules of the race. So far the kids really seem to like this unit. It encompasses research, history, graphing and map skills, elapsed time and distance traveled, writing, reading, and math. We learn more about the Alaskan terrain and weather. The race begins while we are on vacation- Saturday, March 5th. You can follow along at iditarod.com
In reading, we are learning about fractured fairy tales- Specifically Cinderella. We are looking at what makes a fractured fairy tale (Change the characters, setting, point of view the story is written in, etc...) The children are reading about troll, bigfoot, and dinosaur cinderellas, they are looking at it from the stepmother's point of view. They are reading stories from different cultures that are similar to Cinderella. Then the children will be doing a readers theatre play on another version and hopefully can create their own fractured fairy tale.
In math, we are continuing to learn about multiplication. Our focus though is shifting to converting units of measurement like time and weight.
