What a beautiful month it’s been! A few highlights from October 2023 were our class fieldtrip to Oma’s Pumpkin Farm, our all-class Halloween party, the hands-on STEM challenges (like bridge building and landform-making with Playdoh), and still having warm weather!
Monthly Highlights:
- Oma’s Family Farm Fieldtrip – We headed to Oma’s on a Thursday in mid-October! This was so much fun, not only because of all there is to do at Oma’s but because some of our students got to meet one another for the first time! There were slides and yard games, bike tracks and spinning tunnels, animal petting, jumping areas. . . and so much more! We also got to celebrate Kensie’s birthday with a little snack. Huge thanks to all the chaperones who attended and helped out, too!
- Halloween Party – What’s better than bringing everyone together for a fun (and maybe a little chaotic) Halloween get -together?! Complete with “trick-or-treating,” games, a short movie, recess, and time to socialize. . . while wearing costumes! The day was a hit!
Mondays:
- English & Language Arts: October 2023 was all about realistic fiction and understanding the components of this kind of text: realistic characters, details, and setting. We read two short stories, “The Blackout,” and “Henry On Wheels,” and started reflection/response writing in our Writer’s Notebooks!
- Math & Reasoning: Our big focus in math this month was understanding groups of 10 (for both addition and subtraction) with ten-blocks. This is a visual skill that helps build upon understanding for higher-level math. We also worked on identifying one more/one less and ten more ten less, as well as working on greater and less than and/or comparing 2-4 numbers.
Tuesdays:
- English & Language Arts: We had two big October goals in ELA: develop independent reading skills and learn about different genres of writing, specifically narrative and realistic fiction. We read two short stories, “How Many Stars in the Sky?” and “Maybe Something Beautiful.” We also discussed vocabulary and setting, responded to reading with Quick Writes, and used textual evidence to develop our answers to comprehension questions.
- Math & Reasoning: In Math, we dove into an assessment at the start of the month to capture a ‘snapshot’ of our skills. The students did so well will this – and it was super challenging! We focused a lot on arrays and arranging numbers in groups by rows and columns. We also worked on 2-3 digit adding and subtracting more independently.
Wednesdays & Thursdays:
- Foundations: This month we’ve continued with our mix of whole-group lessons and independent practice, but also introduced partner learning stations for both math and ELA! Students loved the game-like feel of working with teams!
- Social Studies & STEM: In Social Studies this month, we continued with our novel-reading of Hooper Finds A Family with an accompanying comic-drawing project. We also dove into a unit on primary and secondary sources and discussed what these look like, both in history and our contemporary world. To expound on our learning about sources, we created our own time capsules to open at the end of the year! And, in alignment with learning about culture and heritage, we also made posters of our origins and family history! In STEM, we learned about landforms, compared different environments to one another, and did multiple challenges, including a ‘Sink Or Float’ lab and partner bridge-building!
Other October 2023 Updates:
- You can find more of our updates by bookmarking our Microschool Page, connecting with our Parent Page, and subscribing to our newsletter (below!).
- AND. . . WE LAUNCHED OUR APP! If you haven’t heard the amazing news, our app is up and running! This will be a central location to share about upcoming events, fieldtrips, happenings, schedule changes, and more, as well as have conversations, newsletters, payments, and social media all in one place! You can find the Apple App Store version here, Google Play Store version here, or Web App here!
