Stone Soup and Library Trip — The Early Learning Community First-Second Grade

This week we got to celebrate Razah’s birthday and we enjoyed our second weekly popcorn stand. Students used their knowledge of coin values to pay for their popcorn. Each week the popcorn prices change as students gain practice counting money. This week students were excited to discover that our salmon are becoming increasingly active! They have been darting and flitting around the tank each morning. We noticed that when the water temperature is warmer, the fish are more active. We continue to use place value blocks to keep track of the temperature units (TUs). As of Friday, our TUs were at 1253 and we plan to release the fish around 1600TUs. Depending on the temperature of the water, the daily TU value fluctuates a little, but is somewhere around 20 TUs each day. This week in writer’s workshop students were working on individual essays about Oregon. Learning how to structure an essay is new for most students. When students finished their essays, they had time to work on writing pieces of their choice. Together we brainstormed a list of different types of writing that students enjoy. Students chose to write grocery lists, recipes, letters to family members, stories, diagrams, and warm fuzzies to classmates. This week we read five different versions of Stone Soup including Cactus Soup, Quill Soup, Bone Button Borscht, and two versions simply titled Stone Soup. We compared and contrasted the different versions and discussed our favorites. On Friday students in each classroom worked together to chop vegetables and prepare cheese and fruit for our Stone Soup Celebration. Our soup turned out delicious. Even better was getting to spend time together as an ELC community! For the last several weeks, Ms. Linda has been volunteering her time on Thursday afternoons to help students sew individual book bags using a sewing machine. Last Thursday our final student finished sewing his bag and so the class was ready for a trip to the library! On Friday afternoon we took our first walking field trip to the Forest Grove library. Students each selected book to check out for the week and used their book bag to keep their book safe and dry on the way back to school. This week we also received Flat Stanley updates from our Flat Stanleys in Uganda, United Kingdom, and Japan. You can read the updates on our Flat Stanley blog.