Week 23

Dear Parents,

        In math we started three digit subtraction with and without regrouping. You can support the learning by continuing to practice a couple of three digit addition as well as three digit subtraction at home in the evening. Knowing how to do both sometimes causes confusion. They are doing well so far.

        In language and reading we have started a unit on landforms and are combining this with research. Your child will learn the many landforms, then pick three to write about in an expository paper to inform. We will organize our facts on a RAN chart then use graphic organizers to organize our facts into a paper. This fun project will continue into next week. 

          In social studies we have continued our map skills as we learned how to read a map key. We celebrated Chinese New Year on Tuesday as we learned about China and some of their customs. We tried eating noodles with chopsticks and had a fortune cookie. We learned that it is the year of the Earth Pig. 

          In science we are learning about objects in the sky. We are talking about how the sun appears to move across our sky, but it is really the Earth that is moving. We have discussed that the Earth revolves around the sun and also rotates on an invisible axis. The sun never moves. We know that the moon has no light of its own and appears to change its shape throughout the month, but it is only the amount of sunlight that reflects off the moon that we see. The moon actually never changes . It is a dark sphere of rock that is revolving around the Earth. We see no moon when the Earth is between the sun and the moon. We see a full moon when the Earth is not blocking any of the sun’s rays. These are hard concepts to understand, but we are reading, watching videos, discussing and writing about what we learn.