Mrs. Orr’s Classroom News

January 24, 2008

Dear Moms and Dads,

"I think the gelatin will become super saturated", was a prediction one of the children made for our liquid experiment on Tuesday. I asked them what they think would happen if we had twice as much gelatin powder and less water than when we made the gelatin snack last week. We mixed our solution and found that the gelatin did dissolve and the water began to turn into a solid rather quickly. We added some drops of food coloring and will let the gelatin rest on the counter for a few days. Hopefully, your children will make a new discovery and have a surprise to hang up in the window!

Our next explorations with liquids and solutions will lead us to answer the question: Do all solids dissolve in liquids?

We are beginning to explore all of the stories from the Red Clover book set for this school year. This week we read Thelonius Monster’s Sky High Fly Pie by Judy Sierra . We found out some facts about flies such as they beat their wings 200 times per second. We also found out that they only have 2 wings instead of the typical four most insects have. Compound eyes was another topic of discussion about flies. Perhaps you read the acrostic poem your child wrote about flies using facts we had discussed.

Today we listened to the story entitled The Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers by Caroline Arnold. This story was a folk tale told in logging camps about a large friendly creature. Some animal catchers wanted to catch the Hodag and the lumberjacks outsmarted them. The children will be working on writing a response to this text using the painted essay format.

The first graders are learning a new strategy in math problem solving today: how to create a table. The clue to knowing when a table would be a more efficient strategy than a diagram is that if there were a pattern or something repeating in the problem, a table would be a good strategy to find the solution.

The second graders have also been working on problem solving with Ms. Hartshorn. They have just completed a benchmark problem in which Ms. Hartshorn scored their pieces.

Your child was given new spelling words on Tuesday. Watch for the spelling papers to arrive home. It is always helpful for your child to practice these problems at home.

Here are some questions to ask your child this week:

What do you know about flies?

What was a Hodag?( a creature with an ox head, alligator tail, bear paws, and a dinosaur back)

What did you find out about liquids this week?

Did you go skiing or snowshoeing today?

What are your new spelling words? Did you get all of last week’s words correct when Mrs. Orr gave you a spelling check?

EVERY FRIDAY: We’ll try to write in our home/school journals to you. Therefore, please return them to school by each Wednesday.