Rimon scientists have been learning about the sun. Most recently, we have been focusing on the sun’s light. Yesterday the children saw a video showing the earth’s orbit around the sun and explaining how the tilt of the earth, in the course of its revolutions and rotations, results in the seasons. The children were amazed to learn that the North and South Poles stay in darkness for six months of the year. We went outside multiple times yesterday to chart the movement of the shadows created by the sun on our makeshift sundial. The children also made their own sundials and used flashlights to re-create the movement of the sun. Then they recorded their observations for their science notebooks. It was amazing to see how the shadow moved so quickly even in the space of about 10 minutes when we were outside observing.
Rimon writers have begun work on their Kevin Henkes posters. Each child has chosen one of Kevin Henkes’s books and has begun to write about that book. The children identify the characters and setting of their book. They also write about why they like that particular book and make both a text-to-self and a text-to-text connection with the book. Then they create a poster with that information and some illustrations of their own.
In Fundations, the children just completed a unit on bonus letters. These are the letters f, l, s and sometimes z that need to be doubled at the ends of words after short vowels. Examples of words with bonus letters include: fall, shell, cuff and fuzz. We also learned the “glued” sound “all” which appears in such words as: fall, ball etc. The sound of the short a in these words is different from the sound it makes in other words like the word apple. We will be learning more glued sounds in our next unit.
We are finishing up a math unit on subtraction and will be moving onto geometry next week. The children have been making fact families and completing subtraction word problems.
In Jewish Living and Learning, we learned about the Jewish calendar and compared it to the secular calendar. We took a quick “trip” around the various Jewish holidays located them in the correct Hebrew month.
Shabbat Shalom, Hamorah Joanne