* Our geometry lesson was about classifying triangles by their sides. Ask your first year to tell you about the special ladders the Greeks used for picking olives, the triangle who thinks he’s too perfect for the other shapes, and have them show you their built in isosceles triangle.

* For language we took out the movable alphabet. This is a great material that allows the students to write words without tiring their hands. We wrote the names of friends in our classroom and spelled out various objects around the room.

* We worked on telling time this week using our clock with movable hands and the clock stamp. Students worked on telling time on the hour and half hour. Telling time is an essential skill in the elementary classroom and is great to practice at home. Help your child to notice the time at key points in your day (dinner, bed time, etc). Keep in mind we use analog clocks at school.

* We built on our decimal system skills this week by doing static addition with the golden beads. Students were very excited for this big work and they love working together on this assignment.

* This week we reviewed the four fundamental concepts in geometry: point, surface, line, solid.

* Our language lesson focused on verbs. Next week you will see lots of ‘verb-men’ coming home in take-home bags. Students drew our verb symbol doing different actions like swimming, climbing, singing and sleeping. This was a very popular assignment.

* On Thursday we had a lesson on ‘decomposing numbers’, which I always think sounds like a pretty creepy lesson. However, it is actually just choosing one minuend, like 11, and finding all possible subtrahends and differences. Students completed this work in their notebooks.

* In geometry we examined adjacent angles. Students drew and labeled complementary and supplementary angles. Ask them to define each type for you.

* We dug deeper into our adjective work this week by studying adjectives that point. Students created comic strips using sentences with adjectives that point. Refresher for adults: this, that, these, those. Students are learning to check their work by making sure that their pointing adjectives are followed by a noun (or else, we discovered, they are not adjectives at all).

* We took out the much anticipated Timeline of Humans on Wednesday and explored the many human developments throughout time. We discussed the three gifts of humans (the head, the heart, the hand). We also talked about how important our imagination will be while we study early humans. While we can use the timeline and scientific discovery to guide us, we can never know the exact person that created the first art or told the first story. Students broke into two groups and each will write and perform a skit about any human first of their choosing (the first medicine, the first tools, the first song, etc).

* We visited our old friend the snake game for our arithmetic lesson. This time we did both addition and multiplication facts using the snake.

* This year will largely be about 3 big concepts in geometry: congruence, similarity and equivalence. I have not mentioned these terms to this group yet (and will not do so for a few more weeks). However, we have already begun to get our hands on these concepts. This week we reviewed the parts of the square (midpoint, diagonal, base, height). Then we learned what happens when we fold the square in various ways. This was a fun activity for our origami fans!

* In language we went over the rules for plural nouns. Students have a basket of rules that they must fill with words that correspond to each.They are finding some rules more challenging than others. The biggest challenge so far has been identifying words from Greek and Latin that still follow Greek and Latin rules (radius, radii/vertex, vertices). We have had the most luck when looking through our mathematics work for these words.

* The Katahdin group also participated in the timeline of humans activity and will continue to do so for the remainder of the year. (see Acadia notes for more info)

* We discussed the relative size of the sun when compared to earth and when compared with other stars. We discovered that stars have a life cycle. Students are writing poems about the life cycle of stars.

* We continued our work with multiples this week by making charts of more than one number and finding common multiples. Next week we will work on Table A – this is a large table that will help us become very familiar with common multiples.