Recapping April 2023: 🐇
The month of April 2023 was short because of Spring Break, but we still had jam-packed weeks! From celebrating Earth Day and having an egg hunt, to dissecting plants and celebrating with our Class Campout, it’s been fun time for all. Here are the highlights – or you can DOWNLOAD + PRINT THE FULL VERSION HERE: [April 2023 Newsletter].
Monthly Highlights:
- CLASS CAMPOUT! Our students earned and were able to celebrate their class stickers with our park date & backyard movie night! This turned out to be a little later than expected (oops!) but it was SO MUCH FUN!
- EGG HUNT: Everyone loved going on a backyard egg hunt & getting little prizes!
- EARTH DAY: Students loved the coloring and writing page we did for Earth Day in our STEM notebooks!
What We’re Up To In Language Arts:
- FINAL ‘Y’: In both March & April 2023, we practiced the final ‘y’ sound, which is a super tricky and flexible vowel sound! We did this through games, worksheets, and stations.
- SPRING WRITING: We’ve been working on free writing in two ways (1) providing specific words to use in sentence(s) to create a framework for writing and (2) bringing in nouns, verbs, and adjectives and practicing both editing AND improving sentences by selecting stronger adjectives as we write.
- VOCAB: In our afternoon, we’ve been learning advanced vocabulary words and using them in context!
What We’re Up To In Math:
- BALANCING EQUATIONS: We focused a lot on ‘balancing’ this month. I talked to the students about the ‘see saw’ when it came to equations, and the importance of balancing the ‘see saw’ so that no one ‘falls off’ (aka: everything is equal). We learned how to think backwards about problems, especially subtraction, and find the missing #s to solve harder problems!
- SHAPES: We took a deep-dive into shapes this month, practicing the 2D names, creating booklets (in the afternoon) and labeling shapes, corners, and sides.
- MONEY: We’ve continued practicing with identifying, counting, and ‘real life’ purchasing!
- SKIP COUNTING: We’ve been working on our skip counting (by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, 100’s) and in our afternoon group, even 3’s, 4’s & 6’s!
- MULTIPLES OF 100: We started learning multiples of 100s (and adding/subtracting 100s) to use our basic facts to solve harder problems!
What We’re Up To In Science:
- PLANTS & PLANT PARTS: For April 2023 STEM, we talked about plant parts (seed, seedling/sprout, sapling, and full plant). We also learned about seed parts and dissected a plant in the yard to identify and connect our in-class notes to the real world!
- EARTH DAY: We did a small unit on Earth Day and talked about the importance of recycling, reusing, and reducing our trash in order to protect the environment!
What We’re Up To In Social Studies:
- EGG HUNT HISTORY: We did a brief study about the history of egg hunts and how they got started before going on an actual one in the yard!
- GERMANY: We learned about Germany and the customs, food, flag/symbols, and way of life. We also created our own schultütes (“school cones”) which are little cones that German students typically get on the first day of first grade! To close out this country study, we are going to have our ‘fieldtrip’ and taste some foods in May!
- DICTIONARY HISTORY: In our afternoon class, we’ve been reading a book Frindle and learning about the origins of words, the dictionary, and how words came to be!
Other April 2023 Updates:
In comparison to March, April was far less of ‘low’ now that we (and mostly me!) have moved through grief Smokey (and other pets we’ve lost along the way). This month, we’ve been on an upswing! Here are our “High, Low, Buffalo” moments — ‘High’ is a happy moment, ‘Low’ is a bad moment, and ‘Buffalo’ is a random moment — from April 2023:
- HIGH: Campout! We (finally!) got to celebrate the great behavior and teamwork of our class in the Class Campout/Movie Night. It was so special getting families together!
- LOW: Less Boys This month two of our boys were gone (Kanoa with family and then sick & Kingston visiting his mom). So, everyone kept saying that our classroom just wasn’t the same. . . and I agree! It was great to have everyone back the last day of the month. 😄
- BUFFALO: The butterfly! We discovered a butterfly on the outside edge of the front porch! It’s been fun (ad SUPER timely!) to track the stages from caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly as of the end of this month!
Spotlight Student:
Each month we celebrate a student (or students) who are doing exceptional academic work and/or been outstanding in terms of behavior, attitude, or empathy towards others.
This month’s Spotlight Student is Aubree! Aubree went out of her way to create a special poster for the classroom with everyone’s names on it. She’s also consistently focused, kind, and a good listener! Thank you for being such a role model, Aubree!
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You can also download the full April 2023 Newsletter [RIGHT HERE].
