Dear Moms and Dads,

It has been wonderful to meet with you to celebrate your child’s accomplishments and talk about how we might help him/her improve in some areas. I hope you were able to tell you child what he/she does well and what we hope to help him/her become better at.

Ms. Kaminski came in this week and read us a new book about germs. We used glitter to discover how quickly germs can be passed from person to person and left in many places other than our hands. Singing the "Happy Birthday" song twice is also recommended as a signal of an appropriate length of time to wash one’s hands.

We have been exploring force and motion this week using cars and ramps. You should have seen their little faces when I opened up a case of my son’s toy cars! They thought this activity was going to be awesome! Using these cars and pieces of cardboard the children are discovering that the angle or incline of the ramp influences the distance a car may move/travel as well as the speed in which it travels. One of the children said, "We found out that you can’t put the ramp straight up because the car just smashes against the force of the floor and stops." Others quickly discovered the difference in friction between the carpet and the tile floor. One group worked on getting a ramp at the right angle so that the speed would allow it to climb up another incline. Another child looked at the toy vehicles I had and said, "I think the one with bigger wheels will go farther." I told him this was a great question for us to explore and we’ll work on finding an answer to that during our next science lessons. These lessons also allow us to notice variables in or explorations and when it will be important to keep them constant such as the slope of the ramp when we compare vehicles with different wheel sizes.

The children have chosen which book group/literature circle they will be in for the next few weeks. I provided nonfiction choices for them this round in order to increase their experiences with this book type. Some children partner read to ensure that everyone can take part in the discussion and exploration of the facts presented in these books regardless of his/her reading ability. Everyday members will decide how many pages they will read and assign jobs such as discussion director, connector, word wizard, artist, and reteller.

Loree Silvis, a math consultant, visited our classroom on Wednesday. She worked on fractions with Ms. Hartshorn’s math group and worked on counting backward. Most kids can count backwards starting at 10, but starting at different numbers is more challenging such as starting at 32 and counting backward by one. She also worked on counting by 10 OFF the decade. This means that if you start at 4 and count intervals of 10 you would say, " 4, 14, 24, 34, 44, 54, 64, etc". The next challenge is to count intervals of 10 backward starting OFF decade such as 107, 97. 87, 77, 67, 57, 47, etc.

Later today at 9:45 we’ll have an assembly about recycling. Make sure to ask your child to tell you about this.

Here are some questions to ask your child this week:

What did you work on in math with Ms. Silvis?

What book are you reading in your literature circle/book group?

How did you see that germs get passed on quickly?

How long should you wash your hands?

What did you find out at the school assembly today about recycling?

Which book will you vote for as your favorite Red Clover book?

What did you discover about the position of a ramp and how far a car will travel?

Dates To Remember:

March 28^th: PTN popcorn sale at snack time

April 2^nd: Four Winds science lesson about owls

April 9^th: Early Release Day

April 10^th: Library make up day (return books on this day)

April 14^th: School Assembly at 2:15

April 21^st-April 25^th: School Vacation

Below are some photos of your children involved in various explorations this week. Enjoy your sharing time.

Sincerely,

Kathi

Chase, Morgan, and Abbey are using the top of a chair and the table to create a slope for their ramp.

Liam and Georgia are building a ramp that drops down and then goes up again. They are exploring how they could generate enough speed to make the car go up a second ramp.

Erica and Evan used the top of the rocking chair as a base for their ramp! They also propped the bottom of the chair up with chalkboard erasers!

Great concentration and teamwork! They are exploring how they can move the car and what kind of force is needed from each of them.

How far will this car go at this slope? They were considering the friction from the carpet so they put another piece of cardboard down for the car to land on.

It looks like this slope will allow the car to move very fast at a greater distance. Lauryn and Alan later moved to the tile floor and found the car traveled even farther when it left the ramp.

Mary and Connor experiment with slope in another way!

Hazel and Francie are very serious scientists.

Charlie and Ms. Silvis work on counting by fives with the bead rope.

Alan is counting by fives and tens with Ms. Silvis.

We are listening to Ms. Silvis while she is counting aloud.

We are counting by tens on the counting ropes.

That’s it for photos. Hope you enjoyed them!