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Monday, February 11, 2008

Great beginning to the week!



Natalie was our Child of the Day and she read The Boy Who Cried Wolf. She liked this book because it teaches you never to lie and always tell the truth.

We had a busy first day of the week. In reading we read Princess Penelope's Parrot and we are inferring character traits. In word work, I introduced their five new words then they went off to work on their word work menu. In writing, we read Snowflake Bently. We are working on the trait of Ideas, and learned that our experiences plus reading about a topic equals IDEAS!

In math, the first graders found out that they already know quite a few math addition facts: +0, +1, doubles, and the then ten facts. I highlighted these on a math fact sheet and they discovered that there really aren't too many more to learn. They know about turn around facts, and that cut the list down, plus we discovered strategies: if you know 5+5=10, then you know 5+6=11 because it's one more. If you know 5+5=10, then you know 5+4=9, because it's one less. That really cut our work down.

Second graders were introduced Friday to multiplication where they had to create arrays. Today, we worked on groups: If you have 5 boxes and 4 are in a box, how many do you have altogether? They are learning that multication is repeated addition. We will work more on understanding multiplcation this week. Please don't ask them to memorize multiplication facts. They need to understand first what you are asking them to memorize. When they get the understanding down....memorization won't be a chore!!! Ease up!!!

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