I can’t believe it’s October! Autumn is officially here.
Last week, Pre-K used the website Starfall to learn more
about shapes. They worked on a variety of skills, including matching 2D shapes
to real life examples, i.e. matching a rectangle to a book cover. They also
sorted shapes by the number of sides and color. They also used various shapes
to make pictures. The children are really improving in their mouse abilities.
Dragging and dropping and double
clicking are tough skills for little hands, but they’re all making great
progress! This week, they did a Sesame Street activity about going to school and
all the mixed feelings that it can bring on!
Kindergarten also did some work with shape and mouse skills.
They worked on a website called abcya.com, where they dragged and dropped
shapes to form pictures. They also worked on scrolling a webpage, understanding
that sometimes you cannot see the entire web page on your screen at any one
time. They worked on scrolling to move the page around so that different parts
of it appear on the screen. This week they’re working on the alphabet using the
PBS website. There are some great videos, games, and activities, including
sections on Sesame Street, Curious George, The Cat in the Hat, and more! They
also have a great parent site at www.pbs.org/parents.
First grade continued their work with
opposites. This week they inserted their images into a document, then resized
and repositioned them. They also added text boxes and speech bubbles. I’m very
impressed with what they have achieved so far. In a very short time, they’ve
covered lots of IT skills, from manipulating images and text, to saving and
naming their documents. This week they’ll put on the finishing touches,
formatting the text and adding colors.
Second grade also continued their
Westward Expansion research from last week and have started creating a fact
sheet about their topic. They’ve also created text boxes, then resized and
repositioned them within their documents.
Third grade also continued their Viking
research last week and created a fact sheet using text boxes. This week, as
they finish with their facts, they will insert images to make the document more
visually appealing. Then they will personalize their work by adding colors,
fonts, and borders.
The fourth graders continued their
virtual trip around the world last week and will be finishing up their travels
this week. They used Google Earth to great success to map out their trip, find
the coordinates of the places they’ll visit, then calculate the distance
travelled. As they are working with partners, it’s been very interesting to see
how they cooperate and communicate to form a strategy to get around the world
in the shortest distance. It’s also been a great geography lesson!
Have a great week!
Mrs. Elliott
