Monday was Civil Rights Day and we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in school on Tuesday. We learned a new vocabulary word: DIVERSITY (awesome, since our letter of the week was Dd!) and discussed how everyone should be treated fairly, no matter what they look like. We are all special! To celebrate this idea, we used our handprints to create a wreath of hands in different skin tones to represent people from all ethnicities.
Our main literature focus was on books about Dr. King- with emphasis on introducing the Civil Rights Movement and some of the main reasons for it & events within it(segregation, unequal treatment of non-whites, Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I Have a Dream Speech, etc.). One of the neatest books we experienced was called Martin's Big Words, which we read and watched an animated version of that included actual audio footage of Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington D.C.. We discussed Dr. King's philosophy that "Hate cannot drive out hate; only LOVE can do that" and how he encouraged others to protest in non-violent ways and be an example of change for the better.
After we enjoyed listening to his actual voice (so cool!) we talked about what dreams WE have to make the world a better place like Dr. King did. We drew pictures of our dreams and Ms. Marianne helped us to write them out in words. We also wrote something that we could do now to help make our dreams come true. Some of our dreams were: "that everyone will have cars and houses / right now I can give someone a house or car for Christmas or their birthday" (although this might have to wait a few years! haha!); "that everyone will be nice to each other / I can be nice to others now"; "that everyone will have a toy to play with / I can share my toys now". Seeing these sweet dreams be put on to paper and shared was heartwarming! 
We learned "The Coin Song" this week. Each coin (penny through quarter) has its own verse. We studied and learned how to differentiate coins as we sang about them. Then each of us was assigned a coin to collect from a big pile of coins. We LOVED this activity- so feel free to practice with me at home by dumping out your change purse and letting me sort the coins. I might be able to tell you some of the characteristics of each coin that we learned too! We'll be revisiting this subject a lot in the coming months to cement the coins and their traits in our minds. Here are the lyrics to "The Coin Song" (to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star")
Penny, Penny,
easily spent.
Copper, brown
and worth one cent.
Nickel, Nickel,
thick and fat.
You're worth five cents,
I know that.
Dime, Dime,
little and thin.
I remember
you're worth ten.
Quarter, Quarter,
big and bold.
You're worth
twenty-five I'm told.
For Science this week, we worked more with snow and introduced some new scientific material. We revisited the idea that snow is frozen water. Ms. Marianne pulled out ice cubes and water for us to see the difference and watch as the frozen ice cubes melted back into water. This led to a discovery of the three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. To illustrate the three states, we used the solid cubes, the liquid water (and discovered that a thing can change states of matter- hello water cycle!) and hairspray. We began to understand the basic idea of matter in a gaseous state by using the hairspray to hear the gas whooshing out of the nozzle and to show the gas pushing the liquid hairspray out of the can. We also used our lungs and mouths as tools to understand the idea of gas. We filled our lungs with the gasses in the air and blew them out our mouths to show that we can't always see a gas, but it's still there! Then we walked around looking for things in each state of matter. We came up with some really neat things- especially when we made it into the kitchen! It made Ms. Marianne laugh when to close the lesson, she asked what the three states of matter were and one student answered: "Solid, Liquid and Hairspray!" hahaha! We'll keep working on that one. :)
For math, we reviewed numbers 0-10, shapes and colors. After working together to put the numbers in order, we played hopscotch outside to count forward to and backward from ten and to count by tens to 100. We worked individually and as a team to find and run to the color, number or shape that Ms. Marianne called. We're all getting so good at identifying! We also used manipulatives of the various shapes we reviewed to build pictures. Our favorite was the rocket ship!
Next week, we'll be finishing up our unit on snow and winter by discovering the Artic and cold animal habitats. We'll be specifically focusing on penguins and polar bears. :) Fun fun fun!
Love,
Your Child
and
Ms. Marianne
