Earth Science: The Sun, Earth, & Moon

lindsayham82
Sep 16, 2017
3 min read

We switched gears this week from community and citizenship to our Earth Science standards. We made space easy readers that went home on Friday and we did a whole lot of reading & writing about the Sun, Earth, & Moon.

Our poem this week was "Me" ... with a healthy dose of sight word practice! :)

& their absolute new favorite math game is "WAR!" (focusing on greater than and less than). We play that Aces are 1, Jacks are 10, Queens, Kings, & we take out the Jokers! This is a great practice with number sense and subtizing (recognizing a set without needing to count the objects). We learned with my jumbo cards, but I told them that dollar store sells cards, so they may be bugging you to go there! You're welcome! :)

The kids beat me badly, but in this picture I would get to take both cards and I'd say "9 is greater than 6" before I can take them! Math Vocabulary is SO important.

On a similar note: I can definitely see who plays games at home! For a different kind of homework this week, spend some time playing board games and letting them do it all for themselves. A lot of them are counting the square they are on as 1 instead of going to the next square and starting at 1. Little things like this are so important! :)

We have one more week of our Earth science to cover focusing on the Sun's heat and light and then we'll be moving on to Physical science: Properties of Matter. This is one of my absolute favorite units because we explore hands-on and tummies filled through Johnny Appleseed Week and pumpkins.

***If you are willing and able to donate for Johnny Appleseed week, here is the signup genius! I appreciate your support!

Ask Your Child About:

-Phonemic Awareness: Onset & Rime (dividing a word into the beginning sound and the ending)- for example: /c/ /at/, /d/ /og/, /m/ /om/ **they have a hard time with this and they add that schwa sound and I correct them absolutely every time because practice makes perfect! If your child says /mo/ /om/, they are adding a schwa and please remind them to "cut" the sound!

-Phonics: Aa (a, apple, /a/) & Gg (g, game, /g/)

-Reading: RL.3.7, RI.3.7 (matching illustrations to text) - We read "Owl Moon" on Friday and this was a great "think aloud book" for us because it talks about going owling. I told the kids that I know what an owl is, but I don't know what owling is so good readers try to figure it out from clues in the book. We kept reading and we learned that you need to be quiet when you go owling and that you do it at night. A couple pages later we found out that the main character's brothers told him that sometimes you'll see an owl when you go owling and sometimes you won't... at this point, we were able to put all of the clues together to figure out that owling is when you go to the forest and look for owls! Please, please, please talk through these things as you read to your child at home. It trains their brains for when they are independently reading!

-Math: Greater than (more), Less than (fewer), and Missing Numbers. We took our first unit assessment and I was very impressed with them! If your child hasn't mastered a specific skill YET, I will be sending home a copy of the assessment so you can work on it at home! Thanks for your support!

-Science: The Earth is our planet and it goes around the sun! The moon goes around the Earth! We can see the moon during the day and night. We can see stars during night and we can see the most stars when we go to the mountains or where there isn't much light.

-Writing: We started writing a full sentence with all of my groups! "I see a ____" (whatever space object we were writing about). I highlight the lines and they know that they should be doing their best kindergarten handwriting staying in the lines and that we start at the very left side of the paper because we write left to right just like we read left to right. We also end with a period!

A Quick Note On Assessments/Homework:

-I sent home an updated ESGI printout of where your child is at for letters, sounds, and sight words as of 9/13. I typically assess letters and sounds every other week and sight words every week!

-I started assessing phonemic awareness on Friday & my intent is to send that home this week! (Identifying rhyming words, creating rhymes, beginning sounds, onset & rime)