Explorers - 2/17/23

 Hello Explorer Families!   

We had a busy week celebrating Valentine’s Day.  Thank you for sending in cards and snacks for our party. We appreciate you!

We hope everyone has a restful and well deserved winter break!

Peak at our Week

ELA

In addition to talking about love for others and for ourselves, we have been thinking  about kindness. How do we show kindness to others and how do others show kindness? We read a great book by Maria Desmondy titled the Jelly Doughnut Difference. Students made paper doughnuts to remind them that they can sprinkle kindness wherever they go. You can view the book read by the author with this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o62vknk2BAY

In our writing notebooks, students are sharing their opinions about a variety of topics. Ask your child if red is the best color. You can also inquire about how love might look different at school than at home. 

Honoring Black History Month

We shared the story Someday is Now:  Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-Ins by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich.  We started with a little lesson on how unfair treatment makes us feel and how we need to work everyday toward equal rights for all.  Several children were given beanie babies to hold and others were not.  The children who were not given beanie babies were upset and mentioned that this wasn’t fair which brought about a lively and honest discussion on how it feels when people are treated unfairly and what we can do about it.  We followed with the story and circled back to how Clara and her students were treated (unable to enjoy lunch at a public lunch counter) and how they stood up for themselves and eventually through their strength of action, changed the environment at these lunch counters for themselves and others.

Math

We all spend some valuable time reviewing the math skills we have learned so far this school year.  Each group worked with review problems on the dry erase boards, played a variety of math skills and demonstrated their mathematical thinking during discussions and problem solving during our math groups.  

We have noticed that playing our math review games, such as Go FIsh Make 10, Splat and POP, allow us the opportunity to quicken our mental math abilities as well as form strategies.  After break, our third grade mathematicians will continue their multiplication work, our second grade mathematicians will dig deeper into double digit addition and our first grade level students are working with doubles and tens in addition.