Next week your scholars will be making magnetic slime! In order for each student to make their own slime we need a few items. Please sign up HERE to make all your scientists dreams come true! Please send in the materials by Thursday, April 6. We really appreciate your help and contributions for this fun activity!

Mrs. Smith is teaching Summer Academy at Arete this year! She is so excited and would love to see your scholars there. See the classes and course descriptions below. Sign up by tomorrow, April 1 for a 10% early bird discount!

Farm to Table Week 1: June 5-9  9:00AM - 1:00 PM

Our journey from "Farm to Table" gives campers a chance to learn what it means to grow, harvest, raise and preserve food. We will be looking at the lost skills of farming through art history and passed-down family recipes. Experiments with photosynthesis, anatomy, and decomposition will help campers see nature at work. By the end of the week we will have a real farmer's market where each student will sell good they have made. Additionally we will host a local farmer with produce for families to browse and show, while discussing the importance of healthy choices for mind, body, and soul!

Inventions and Discoveries Week 2: June 12-16 9:00AM-1:00PM

Albert Einstein said, "Play is the highest form of research." We will learn to "play" with the past as we learn about foundational discoveries affecting our lives today - from paper and plastic, catapults and castles, to light bulb and robotics, we will explore how discoveries and inventions are like a snowball effect, as one idea is a platform for another. Scholars will learn how it can take centuries of ideas before inventions come to fruition. On Friday, we will host a science fair, displaying the different inventions campers "played with and came up with on their own!

Fine Arts and French Night is coming this Friday, April 7th!

Check out how much fun we had this week:

Magnets!

Reading the "Teaser" chapters at the end of Sarah, Plain and Tall

Ballroom dancing in P.E!

Cuteness overload!

Here is a glimpse at our upcoming week:

Language arts: We will we working through the writing process next week! Students will start with prewriting on Monday, brainstorming a list of their favorite activities. Tuesday will be spent writing a rough draft, Wednesday and Thursday will be spent revising and editing their drafts (first on their own, then with a peer). On Friday students will write their final papers. Mrs. Smith and I will be emphasizing that final papers should be students BEST work! This includes neat handwriting, proper formatting, and being proud of what they are turning in! We will read a story called About Lying and have a discussion about how lying leads to greater problems that one might initially realize. In literature we will be reading Little House in the Big Woods please send in a copy of this book with you child if you have not already! We will discuss the setting and how it relates to us in Arizona, and outline the 5 main characters in the story. After reading we will discuss how Laura's house and our homes differ, and learn the steps of food preservation! Ask your literature master what the vocab word 'headcheese' means!

Math: In math next week we will look at capacity! We will compare the capacity of contains to begin with, and then learn about the unit Liter. We will compare the capacity of containers in liters to units we are familiar with (cups, gallons, etc.) We will solve word problems involving capacity, and make a fun visual to see how all units compare! Make sure you ask your capacity captain about their new best friend, Gallon Bot!

History: Students will learn about mining in town and how they turned into ghost towns after the mines ran dry. Ask your scholar to explain the importance of Sequoyah, the Trail of Tears, Buffalo and the overall impact settlers had on the lives of Native Americans.

Science: Next week we will assess our understanding of magnets! Can you help our class by donating supplies to make magnetic slime? Please see the sign up link!

Week 30!

Hello families!

I hope this blog post finds you rested and relaxed after a great weekend! Mine was one of those nonstop weekends that has me looking forward to my routine of the work week! We celebrated my husband's birthday this weekend with families on both sides and some great friends (read: I cleaned the house, had people  over, cleaned up the house and repeated 3 times!)!
This upcoming week will be an exciting one, I will be at a professional development on Monday and Tuesday with the Arizona Department of Education on teaching reading effectively. Mrs. Smith will have the reins, and I will be back on Wednesday. I will have limited access to email at the conference, so I appreciate your patience with my communication, and if you need to get a message directly to your child I suggest calling the office those two days!

Announcements:
Field trip: We will be going to the Pioneer Living History Museum on Thursday, April 13! This is an amazing trip that I am greatly looking forward to! It will be an all day event, if you'd like to volunteer please send me an email so I can start generating a list. The field trip cost will be $20, and a permission slip will go home shortly. I will send an email the day the permission slip goes home!

Book  Reports: You child should've received a new book report in their Friday Folder. Some students got biography books, and some got a literature book. I didn't have enough of the same genre to go around students either got a biography book report or a literature cube book report. Please let me know if you have any questions on them! I am happy to help.

Fine Arts and French night is coming up on April 7th! The students have been practicing a song for a video for the French portion and its ADORABLE (or should I say mignon?)!

AzMerit testing starts this week for our 3rd through 5th grade students, while this doesn't directly impact your second grader, they will be taking it next year and we are prepping them through computer use and practice! If you come to volunteer please keep in mind students are testing and don't throw too big of a party in the hallway :]

We will start reading Little House in the Big Woods next week! If you don't already have it, please order it here.

Here is a look at our week:

Language arts: We will start a new unit on dictionary skills! We will become dictionary daredevils, alphabetical order aficionados, and guide word wonders! If you find yourself with nothing to talk about in the car help your child visualize the alphabet by asking what would come first in a dictionary; the word dog or the word iguana and WHY. In literature we have finished up Sarah, Plain and Tall, ask your scholar about the ending :]. This week we will spend some time in fairy tales and tall tales and explore the lives of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, John Henry, and Casey Jones!

Math: Next week in math we will continue working with time! Please continue conversations with your time master. Next week we will relate time to events of our daily life. We will find the duration of a time interval in minutes and house, as well as attacking word problems with elapsed time. We will review and take a Unit 1-11 cumulative test on Friday. The homework Thursday night will provide great practice for Friday's test!

History: We are continuing on our journey west, learning about The Pony Express and following the cowboys, farmers, and miners on their adventures and challenges that come with moving to new lands. Can your history buff tell you about Daniel Boon? Robert Fulton? Jedidiah Smith? Or my person favorite Levi Strauss?

Science: Have you noticed all the magnets disappearing from your refrigerator? Students are LOVING our new unit on magnets. This week we will continue experimenting with magnetic poles and magnetic fields. We will also investigate and discover how a compass is a magnet!

XOXO,
Mrs. Cook

Spring Break Post

I hope you have a great spring break ahead of you! I will spend mine snuggling with Chief, prepping some fun units for fourth quarter, and writing to you about each of your incredible kiddos!

Thank you all for the birthday love. You showered me with kindness and love, in the form of flowers, sweets notes, Cheetos, things that made my teacher heart sing (stamps, scented markers, post-its), and the perfect accessories for my blue kitchen! This is what my desk has looked like all week, these flowers have brought me so much joy!

Pictures from the fun had this week:

If practicing fractions with M&M's is wrong I don't want to be right.

Writing can be a lot more productive with a change of scenery :]

Teamed up with 5th grade to have a great discussion on criticism!

Simple Machine Centers!

Here is a look at our short week when we return from spring break:

Language arts: We will continue to read Sarah, Plain and Tall next week. In chapter 8 Sarah starts to feel sad, lonely, and homesick. We will discuss what we would miss if we moved and formulate a paragraph based on our list. In grammar we will review all the parts of speech we have learned so far. Ask your scholar if they can name all 6! (Cheat sheet: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, and pronoun.) We will review classifying sentences, and continue to build our own that follow the 5 rules of a complete sentence!

Math: We will hit the ground running after spring break with a new unit on TIME! We will do a review of concepts learned in first grade, and then dive into minutes before and after the hour. We appreciate your partnership in talking to your kiddos about what time they get up, what time you leave for school, what time you eat dinner, etc. That will greatly help us when we tackle our chapter on elapsed time!

Science: We will be ATTRACTED (hehe) to a new unit on MAGNETS! This will require a lot of exploration and experimentation with different materials. Can you scholar identify magnetic objects at home? What materials are these objects made of?

History: We will continue our journey forward in time as the scholars pioneer unchartered territory. Ask your scholar how the invention of the steamboat changed American life and enabled the growth of cities. Friday we will explore the Oregon trail!

Weekly Recap

Aaaaccchhhhooo! Our classroom is in need of some more tissues and Lysol wipes! We have been battling so many germs in school, and doing our best to wipe our desks, pencils, and supplies as much as possible. Mrs. Smith and I would really appreciate donations of tissues and Lysol wipes, we are totally out!

We also need a few bags of M&M's donated for a fun fraction activity next week. If you are able to donate a bag, please send them in with your child before Wednesday!

We had such a fun week! Here are some cute pictures of our week:

We all loved getting to show some school spirit!

Working together to use our pencils in a new way! As levers to move Hot Tamales from one bowl to another!

Accidental twinning! Same dress, and Toms!

Here is a look at our upcoming week:

Language arts: In language arts next week students will take a break from diagramming and building sentences in isolation, to building wonderful sentences that fit into a paragraph! Students will be writing about their favorite animals, using supportive details as to WHY those are their favorite animals. Feel free to brainstorm this weekend. We are all loving Sarah, Plain and Tall. We had a blast making a book cover for ourselves, ask your child what adjectives they used on their book cover to describe themselves. Our class voted on the title Mrs. Cook, Slow and Awsome for my book title, which was quickly defended that I'm a slow runner...not slow at doing tasks ;]. This week we will look up vocab words, and answer comprehension questions for chapters 4-6. We will also write an article for a pretend newspaper describing a friend that we'd like to have in our lives, much like that article Pa wrote for Sarah!

Math: Next week we will continue to explore the world of fractions! We will make pizza and discuss fractions through looking at pizza toppings, and pizza slices. We will understand that fractions are a part of a whole, and that fractions are EQUAL parts. We will use M&M's to make fractions come alive as well!

History: Monday, students will wrap up the War of 1812 by learning about Dolley Madison, Old Ironsides, and the Star Spangled Banner. Please ask your historian to tell you about these important historical elements. Next, we will head west!

Science: Simple machines will continue into next week. We will take a closer look at how pulleys allow us to use gravity to help move heavy loads. We will create our own pulley using a soda can! Next, we will review how wheels and axles help us move heavy loads by decreasing the amount of friction. How do simple machines make work easier?