SPRING


Related Arts

The elementary school Art department welcomes you to our ARTWAY hallway at LES. 

Notice our Pumpkin Patch painting display of 1st grade and Lower Multi-Age work.

Students practiced drawing Chalk Pumpkins on the driveway before they drew and painted their final pumpkins.

They also mixed their own colors of paint out of red, yellow and blue tempera.

As you walk down the hallway, you can see:

  • 3rd grade Scratch Art Trees mounted on printed leaf backgrounds,

  • 2nd grade Butterflies with movable wings and their creators initials, and

  • our 1st grade favorite......our own version of "Goldfish" by Henri Matisse.

Come visit us!  It feels like spring!

    

 

GRADE 3

During the month of March, third graders worked hard preparing for and taking the Connecticut Mastery Tests.  After two weeks of testing, they were rewarded by Mrs. Simon with a school wide movie shown in the gym. Good job third graders!  We have moved on from taking timed subtraction facts to timed multiplication facts.  If your child hasn’t mastered subtraction facts yet, make sure they continue working on these at home.  We have learned almost all our multiplication facts at this point, and are working on becoming fluent with them.  Children will need to study these at home in order to memorize their facts.  Summarizing and finding the main idea are two reading strategies we have been practicing.  Third graders are also getting very good at answering written comprehension questions, Turning the Question Around (TTQA) to begin their answer and using the text to support their answers.  

We are also beginning to talk about Colonial Times.  On April 4 we will be visiting Old Sturbridge Village .  This will be a nice introduction to how people lived during that time period. 

     

In addition to all the hard work done in March, we have also had quite a bit of fun.  Mr. Olsen came to LES to tap a Sugar Maple tree for us.  He drilled a tap hole and put a spout into the tree.  We collected sap in a bucket, and spent two days boiling it down to make maple syrup.  We talked about how the Native Americans collected sap and made maple sugar.  Finally, we sampled our homemade syrup on waffle sticks - yum! 
The end of March also brought our second Author’s Breakfast of the year.  Students read their stories to another third grade class.  Parents of the authors joined us as well, and we ended the morning with juice and munchkins.  Stories about sly leprechauns, lofting kites, growling bears, and amazing robots entertained us all!  It was so nice to hear what different children have been writing about in their classrooms. 

In science, we have been studying the desert biome.  Students enjoyed learning about how plants and animals have adapted to survive in such a harsh environment.

 

Grade 1

During the months of March and April first graders have read in Anthology Four of our Harcourt/Trophies Series. In the series, students have been exposed to various genre of literature including realistic fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, and fantasy.  Students also had an opportunity to read in an interview format.   Social Studies themes and skills of family traditions, geography, and map reading were explored through some of anthology stories.  Science concepts of the diversity of animals, animal homes, animal needs, and life cycles were also integrated into these literature experiences.  Students were able to practice important reading strategies such as creating mental images, making and confirming predictions, re-reading, and reading aloud while reading.  Students focused on comprehension skills of cause and effect and classification/categorization while reading a text.  In Grammar students learned to include describing words in their writing.  Describing words include shape, color, size, number, and those that use all five senses.  

In Math students have explored the concepts of geometric shapes and fractions.  Students learned about the vertices, flat surfaces, line of symmetry, equal parts, and half, third, and fourth.  Students also have learned about money, coin recognition and counting money. 

As spring has gradually emerged once again, students have experienced the season and associated holidays through a variety of classroom experiences.     Students rubbed the softness of pussy willows across their cheeks and practiced their handwriting to copy a poem about pussy willows

Students said farewell to the winter season and welcomed the spring season as they wrote a poem entitled “Good-bye …. And Hello . . .”.

 
 

Students read a story “Rechenka’s Eggs” and then designed their own egg.  Then they wrote a description of their beautiful eggs.
 

Students had fun exploring the traditions and legends of St. Patrick’s Day.  Students practiced their handwriting skills as they copied a poem with their best handwriting.