Community Events, Phonics, and Sugar Crystals!

Community Events

We had an exciting week with various special events. On Wednesday, we welcomed Ezra back to school from his new brother’s bris with a Hebrew card made by his classmates. Students were so excited to find out the new baby’s name and also had many compliments for Ezra’s special kippah that he was still wearing from the occasion!

On Thursday, we attended our sixth grade buddies Heroes Convention. Students were very interested to see some of their buddies dressed up, and to learn more about the heroes that they had researched. Ask your child which hero their buddy chose. 

Lastly, we have been busy preparing for the Hebrew play all week. Students have been practicing their Hebrew lines, creating butterfly and Chanukkah themed head-dresses, and participating in rehearsal in the gym with 3rd and 4th grades. We are so excited for you to see all of our hard work pay off on Monday at the play!

Phonics

Over the past few weeks we have been working on looking at words with a “phonics eye”. This means instead of reading words for only their meaning, we are also reading words to see what we can learn from their spelling. This week we focused on sorting long vowel sounds into 3 categories: vowel teams, silent e, and exceptions. With a copy of some pages of a book we read, we wrote down all the words with long vowel sounds and sorted them. Words like “have” and “learn” went right to the exception category, since although one has a silent e and one has a vowel team, neither make the long vowel sound!

At home, print out some poetry and find the long vowel sounds in the poem. Then categorize them- there’s a lot to talk about!

Science

Art with Iviva

We’ve been preparing for Hanukkah by making Hanukkiot (we will take these home next week) and creating wrapping paper and cards. We’ve been painting with acrylic and drawing with markers, pencils and oil pastels. We can’t wait for you to see what we’ve made!