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The Stroud Crowd Newsletter > February 26, 2007 What's New in Room 202? We have had many exciting learning opportunities the last couple weeks! The students finished their animal research reports by publishing video books and reading them to their classmates, and then we measured and made life size paper drawings of the animals. This math activity was all about the process, not the product : ) We were surprised at how big our animals were. We learned a lot about the rainy and dry seasons on the savanna on our walking fieldtrip to the zoo. We learned how the plants and animals survive during long periods without rain. The students looked for signs of water all around the savanna animal exhibits and the African village. We made a Maasai village model, made and wrote pretend postcards from Kenya, wrote letters to the Maasai elder, learned about cultural differences, made an alphabet book about Kenya with Liz Anderson (your child will get their own copy of our class book!), and made wire toys like Kenyan children in the library. Beck’s dad shared some photos and fabulous stories from his safari with us, and the children were mesmerized by his adventures. In math, we continue to investigate shapes by sorting shape cards by attributes, playing “Guess My Rule,” covering pattern block puzzles and playing predict and cover, exploring symmetry in designs on the computer using “Mirror,” composing shapes with triangles, and creating a definition for rectangles and quadrilaterals. We investigated beginning multiplication concepts / arrays by making snap cube buildings with __ number of floors and __ number of rooms on each floor. Declan, McKenzie and Jakob made a 10 story building with 20 rooms on each floor, and we figured out that their building had 200 rooms altogether! We explored different ways to figure out the total number of rooms in the building and began to see why multiplication is an important thing to learn. Continue to practice counting money, basic + and— facts, and telling time. We had a wonderful Valentine’s Day that began with packing bag lunches in an assembly line with Ms. Davis’ class. We delivered the lunches to the homeless at Tent City and returned in time to have some yummy goodies at our party. The kids really enjoyed this experience and learned a lot about the importance of helping others. Other fun activities have rounded out our days, like reading to our Reading Buddies, a class visit by Michael Miller of Let Kids Be Kids to talk to us about homelessness, a Book It assembly about Goin’ Someplace Special, a wonderful WW Book It performance, the Kindergarten parade of international floats, making art inspired by Paul Klee with our wonderful Art Docents (Liz, Chrissy, Ingrid, Melanie, and Jennifer), and filling the marble jar for good behavior to have a class celebration. We watched the Lion King on the big screen and noticed many features and animals we had been learning about during our study of Kenya. Congrats to Leo and Will, our Check it Out winners the last couple weeks. What's the Buzz? The Buzz Group theme for Monday, March 5 will be amazing animals—bring something animal related. Story Corners Practice your story. 3/2 10:30 Deena, Leo, Wren, McKenzie 3/9 3:00 Jessica, Briana, Will, Jakob 3/16 3:00 Carmen, Cole, Beck, Hayden Reminders Week of 2/26 - 3/2
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West Woodland Elementary School |