This Week in 2nd/3rd

Ms. Kelly’s math group stayed extra busy this week investigating the number of faces, edges and vertices on different shapes.  They reviewed plane and solid shapes to keep things fresh! These Betas LOVE playing games against the teacher so this week they played a version that required them to get 5 in a row by matching the number of faces with the solid shape…Students won!!🏆 Since these kiddos were in a competitive mood they also played “Beanstick Challenge”. They were given a sum and needed to figure out what bean sticks were needed to make that sum – sounds easy, but it’s actually quite difficult! Fun was had by all! Fantastic work mathematicians!

Ms. Skylar’s math group exerted some major math effort this week! Monday brought a quick quiz on related number pairs and a brand new game! This 2 player game included multiplication and division, two dice were rolled, the sum was added up, that sum corresponded to an equation on the gameboard, for example: 7 x n =49 or 64➗n = 8. Using their knowledge of multiplication and division, they needed to solve for “n” and color in the corresponding leaf on their math tree. Tuesday and Wednesday brought a “Math Hunt” that served as a final review for our unit.  Thursday was our unit 4 post-assessment, they’re off to a VERY strong start and will finish them up on Monday.  Incredible work as always, mathletes!

These diligent Betas have been working their tails off….Tall Tales to be more specific! This week was all about last minute edits, writing final drafts, and crafting their main characters! Each day more kiddos finished their stories, we are so unbelievably proud and can’t wait for y’all to read them! In between writing we read book club books, enjoyed some free reading and expanded our phonics knowledge! Do you know how many different ways there are to spell long vowel sounds? Some students spent time investigating and recording different long vowel sounds, others worked on finding evidence within text independently and practiced spelling their weekly words, paying close attention to vowels vs. consonants. Schwas were still a solid focus, we learned where they occur and spent time categorizing them…it was a schwatastic time! 

We’ve been traveling for months and months, our shoes are so worn that we can feel every little rock, our clothing is mostly patches, our bellies hardly ever full, but our spirits, well they still remain intact and thank goodness for that! When we set out on one of our last legs it was treacherous and one family completely ran out of food, but thankfully we could all restock when we made it to Fort Walla Walla Washington – it was a close call. We needed something to pass the time and serve as a distraction from the monotony, so the children picked up a new skill, embroidery, and boy are they good at it! They’ve been working with colored yarn and burlap, creating lovely little samplers. Unfortunately, our fun stopped there because we lost more provisions in a storm and river crossing, our oxen are continuing to die from exhaustion and starvation, and tragically we also lost another member of our wagon train to an outbreak of Cholera, but we did make it to Fall River Oregon. We mustered up every last drop of energy and courage that we had left and FINALLY made it to Oregon City!! It has been one heck of a journey but we are so grateful to be in this beautiful land of opportunity! Upon further reflection, we couldn’t help but wonder if this move will be worth the loss of family, friends and sentimental personal belongings, but it’s too soon to tell right now. We need all the rest we can get because our next journey blasts us into orbit! Space, here we come!