No Formal Newsletter this Week

Due to the short week and snow days, there is no formal newsletter this week.  Below are a few reminders:

January Home Project Due January 31st.

Scholastic Book Orders Due Monday.

Hollywood Variety Show is Friday, February 1st at the High School.  We will be having a dress rehearsal during the day on Thursday, January 31st.  Please have your child where a white shirt and jeans to school on Thursday.

Our class play, The Mitten, will be Friday, February 8th at 2:30 here at Hollywood.  Check your child's folder to see what part they will be in the play. 

January 17th, 2013- Ice Exploration

Upcoming Events:

• Our class will be doing an act in the Hollywood Variety Show on Friday Jan. 1st at 7:00pm.  A note was sent home Monday and today.  More information will continue to come home.  The class is very excited to be performing on the High School stage!
• We will also be putting on a play called, The Mitten on Jan. 8th at 2:30 here at Hollywood.  A note is coming home today.  More information will be coming home to give you additional details.  This play goes along with all of our learning about winter and the skill of retelling stories.

Highlights from the Week:

• In language arts we practiced making predictions and checking to see if our predictions are correct.  We also worked on recognizing the structure of a book: ABC book, 123 book, book with a pattern, book with a beginning, middle, end, etc.  We have also been practicing with some rhyming.
• In writing, we wrote a story about what a snowman does a night, which was inspired by the story, Snowmen At Night.  While writing this, we worked on adding details to our words by adding where or when the snowman did the activity.
• In math, we were introduced to a new center called, Beat You to 20.  With this center, we are working on recognizing numbers, counting, comparing quantities, and adding together.
• In science, we continued to learn about ice through experimentation.  We picked some liquids, put them in a freezer overnight, and then checked them to see if they froze.  We discovered that shampoo, hair gel, juice, and paint freeze.  Vegetable oil froze, but melted extremely quick.  Hand sanitizer did not melt at all.  We then recorded what we learning about ice in our individual science books.
• During community centers, we maintained our current centers.  We finally finished painting our "ice blocks" so no we are going to start building with them!

January 11th, 2013

Highlights from the Week:

• Special Theme of the Week: Winter
• Heart Word of the Week: for
• In language arts, we are working on making inferences while we read and summarizing what happened once we are done.  We are also practicing orally breaking apart words into their individual sounds.
• In writing, we worked on adding details to our writing that answer who, when, and where.
• In math, we have started to learn about money.  We were introduced to a center that practices comparing amounts of pennies.  We are also exploring shapes during our calendar time.  We are learning how shapes fit together and how shapes can be made using different shapes.
• In science, we are beginning to learn about winter.  We are writing our own little science books.  We started by recording what we already know about winter and what we want to know.  We also recorded in our science book how we will learn about winter.  We learned that one way to learn about winter is to explore, so we explored ice.  While we explored ice we made observations, came up with ideas, and created some questions we want to investigate.  One question we came up with is how can we melt an ice cube the fastest.  We then conducted an experiment to figure out the answer to our question.
• During community centers, we have added a few winter themed activities.  At the art center, we are making and painting a snowman using marshmallows as our brushes.  We are painting "ice blocks" (brown boxes) so we can build with them next week.  Also, in dramatic play, we have opened a hot chocolate shop where we are practicing writing down orders, making orders, and exchanging money.