Spending and Saving

The first lessons in our current Social Studies unit helped us compare needs and wants. The second lesson in the unit is to explore how to save money and how to spend it. This week the students were given a job to do in the classroom. Once they had completed their jobs they would get paid a "salary" to put towards their needs and wants in the classroom. Here is our price list:

The top three items are the "needs" of the classroom. These needs are what they must buy everyday before they are allowed to buy any wants. The wants are all the items in green. To add to the experience, students were given a variety of jobs with a variety of salaries. Some students have just enough money to pay for their needs while others are able to save more. We have had some great discussion as a class about whether this is fair or not. Overall the kids have been extremely excited this week to do their job and receive their salary. 

Bankers handing out money as people finish their jobs. 

Letter Sorters are putting all the letter in the right spot. 

Custodian is making our floor shiny and clean!

Class President

As part of our Good Citizen unit in Social Studies, we elected a class president. It was fun for the kids to learn the election process. We started by nominating candidates. Next the candidates made speeches. Then everyone had to register to vote and wait in line to go into the voting booth. It was an exciting experience and we are all better citizens after the process!

Voter Registration Cards 

Waiting in line to vote 

Inside the "voting booth"

Picking a candidate

The Crayon Box That Talked

Last week we read a fabulous book:

In this book all the crayon are mad at each other and dislike the other colors because they are different. A little girl buys the box of crayons and uses them together to color a beautiful picture. The crayons see that when they all work together they are complete. 

"We are a box of crayons each one of us unique
But when we get together the picture is more complete"

We learned what the word UNIQUE meant and discussed how our classroom has many different colors. We ended by coloring our own crayons to make a classroom crayon box!

Geography

We used Google Earth today to review our continents and oceans. The kids were so excited when we zoomed in to see our classroom at Glenwood. We discussed the difference between city, state, country, and continents. This is a very hard thing for the students to grasp, but we will keep working at it! We used Google Earth to draw pictures in a book that had our state, country and continent! 

Continents

We are working on learning the continents and oceans as part of our curriculum. Here is a great website to practice. Start with level L and work your way up to level 3! Ask your child to sing you our continents song, it will surely get stuck in your head!

Social Studies

Today the students did a social studies lesson with Mr. Graham where they learned the word "attributes". Students started by coloring a simple picture of a house in accordance with different attributes. For example: If you have a brother color the door red. If you do not have a brother, color the door blue.

Once the students were finished coloring according to all the different attributes, it was time to compare! They looked for houses that were the same, similar, and different. This was a great activity to not only get to know the other students of the class, but to introduce our social studies objective of the week! Look for these in the green folders tomorrow and ask your child if they remember all the attributes!