Newsletter Info

Social Studies
What do shells, cows, and whale teeth have in common? They were all once used as money, which is this week's discussion theme. We will learn all about how money is used to buy and sell goods, as well as how money can be earned and spent. We will learn to differentiate between wants and needs, as well as how a budget can help us use our money more wisely. In addition, we will discuss how money can be saved in a bank account. The quiz will be on Friday.


Science
This week we will finish our unit on The Sun & Gravity. The test will be Thursday. We will conclude the unit with some labs that review how gravity can be overcome, a tinkering lab involving rockets constructed out of various materials (emphasis: how greater force can help us overcome gravity more easily), and a round of Jeopardy (Wednesday) to review. Please encourage your child to bring home their science notebook. It contains all of their notes from class, as well as the lab sheets. These are great study tools for the unit test.


The students have been working on their multiples charts. They should have the multiples of 2 through 12 completed in their folders. They are to review and practice skip-counting by the multiples for a few minutes each evening. Learning the multiples is an important tool to understanding multiplication and division. In class, we are continuing identifying and learning multiplication combinations we don't know. We are practicing using multiplication combinations we do know to help us determine the product of more difficult combinations (clustering). For example, the students may not know the product of 9x4, but they can break it down into 5x4=20 and 4x4=16 to help them get the final product of 9x4=36. The students have also created multiplication cards in class to practice with at home. The homework sheet for this week is Sheet #13. The students are expected to bring this to class for review on Wednesday and Friday. They will also have a Math quiz on Tuesday.