In social studies we visited our last continent Asia! We are very fortunate to have three families from that continent. They came in and shared similarities and differences between China, Japan and Korea. Then we began a deeper study of Japan through Japanese folktales in reading, research while watching videos and reading books about Japan. We have practiced our note taking skills. Most importantly we got to visit the Boston Children's Museum which has a life size replica of a traditional Japanese house. We were able to do an ancient form of art called Suminagashi!
The children have read many Japanese folktales during our reading time. They have compared character types and can easily identified character traits and types by the actions of the characters! Ask them who the heros and villains are in the stories they have been reading. They have also compared different folktales using venn diagrams. We not only identified the lessons of the stories but how we can apply these to our own lives! One student wrote:
"The folktale, The rabbit that Crossed the Sea, is trying to tell us that if you trick someone there will be a consequence. I can learn from this by not tricking my sister to do stuff. Because the rabbit learns never to trick again and I can get in trouble too!"
We wrapped up our opinion writing unit and became poets! We began by using our poet's eyes to look at ordinary objects in a new way! We then thought about topics that give us a BIG feeling and found small moments in our lives that hold the big feeling. I shared how simply looking a piece of wood from my house makes me think about how important my family is and that although we all make mistakes, we learn and love through them. A small moment I shared was my walks to feed the goats at Wright Locke farm with my daughters because this short time together shows our love for each other and the world we live in. Be sure to keep an eye out for the folders bursting with your child's poetry that will be coming home in June.
In Math, we have been looking at the patterns we notice as we look at numbers into the hundreds. Our place value models now represent a third value and students are looking at multiples of 100! We continue to ask students to share the multiple strategies they use during "Buddy Checks" and class discussions. This allows students to consider different ways of figuring out the answer and ultimately the most efficient for themselves. Flexible thinking, and understanding and valuing others thinking are important critical thinking and collaboration skills!