CHECK FOR NEW HOMEWORKS LINKS !!!
Well, we did it. We decorated our Graham Cracker Houses and boy do they look wintery and beautiful. Of course, they all wanted to take them home the same day, but..... we haven't written a rough draft, edited it ourselves and with a peer, and of course, had Mrs. Petty done the final run-through to publish. We hope to complete this task within the next three days, so look for your child's house to additionally adorn your table and/or a holiday decoration spot around the house. Thanks, once again, to the Matallana girls' and baby brother for bagging all the trimmings, ... it just worked out so well. BTW, I am discouraging any munching of the house and its outer-limits. You can look, but please don't eat after they're sent home.
We also completed 24 holiday cards with personal letters to 24 different schools around the United States. We look forward to receiving 24 different ones from friends in the U.S. We'll also find the location of their school on Google Earth. What a way to see and virtually 'travel' to another place in the U.S. from here in Italy. I'm learning right along with all the students.
This week we'll also be working on our Family Holiday Gift and hope to wrap and send them home next week. It's a labor of love and a little keepsake for years to come. Hope you like them, when they're finished. :-)
We're comparing two different versions of the Gingerbread Man/Boy stories this week, also. Out first version was a Phonics Reader version of the Pancake Man. This will be sent home on Monday evening, so listen for great phrasing and fluency. It should be a familiar read by now, so enjoy and encourage expression during reading.
Our math addition and subtraction fact families are coming right along. Teaching and working on strategies seems to help with mental computation, so encourage the thinking part when mentally computing. We are also very good at quickly duplicating a model of 10s and 1s using manipulatives with numbers from 1-100. This helps in being able to visualize regrouping with double digit addition. We'll save double-digit subtraction for much later in the year, until they are confident and flexible with their addition.
If you have a family photo(s), please send in. We've got a few together-families, and other collage-family featuring individuals within the family. We'd love to have everyone's picture(s) up to display. You are still welcome to get your students registered to use the Dodds.net secure e-mail at school, to encourage learing about the web-e-mail system. We've got 5 of our students up and running. Send in a note, and I'm happy to send the forms necessary to get them on before Winter Break.
Mrs. Petty
