We started the week with docent-led tours of the California section of the Botanical Garden at UC up in Tilden. We experienced first hand how the local native people used plants and trees in many ways from basketry to medicines to toys. Upon our return we reflected on the experience with words and labeled pictures. The results are hanging […]
Highlights from our two four-day weeks in January include fraction work with baking and eating banana bread, touring Strawberry Park to learn more about the local plants and how they were used by the Ohlone people, starting our math unit on money, learning about and writing with idioms, and revisiting our photosynthesis experiment! In math we wrapped up fractions […]
Thank you to all the Temescal families who joined us for our Winter Celebration of Learning to wrap up 2014 with us! We appreciated the festive treats, as well as the singing, strumming, and all of your help. The writers were thrilled to share their five-paragraph expository essays with you and hear your appreciations and […]
We really enjoyed performing and making cornhusk dolls with our Grandfriends! In writing workshop we are putting the finishing touches on our Thankful Expositories and began writing About the Author before we publish these amazing five-paragraph essays. We studied About the Author pages by two of our favorite authors, J.K. Rowling and Roald Dahl, and […]
In math we moved from multiplication into division with the concept of sharing and arranging things into equal groups: cookies, chairs, apples, money, donuts, etc. When drawing our math models we learned to keep things simple, organized, and efficient. We also worked on word problems in which we needed to decipher what operation (addition, subtraction, […]
In math we continue our multiplication work by building arrays in a “Ways to Arrange _____ Chairs” activity. We revisited a favorite math game called Real Estate Math that builds arrays and gets us thinking about the relationship between repeated addition and multiplication. It is also getting us ready for perimeter . . . students […]
Our excitement about math is multiplying! This week we launched into our math unit on multiplication. We tied in our everyday connections by brainstorming items that come in groups and used these lists to work out multiplication story problems and make up our own. Try this at home using the following template: There are _____. […]
Hey Folks, I just wanted to put a quick word out on the coming “sick season” . . . First of all, you may have heard on the news about the Enterovirus D68, and that there have been 2 reported cases in Alameda County. It’s important to know that this is not, by any means, […]
Things are really heating up in Temescal Creek, and we’re not just talking about the temperature. The learning and fun are also on the rise! Temescal Mathematicans are adding and subtracting two digits and more (with and without regrouping), and will solidify this work next week. We also learned a new and elegant subtraction game […]
In math we continued one-on-one assessments to get a clear picture of each child’s number sense: place value, counting, skip counting, as well as ordering and comparing numbers. The mathematicians have been enthusiastically showing what they know and learning a whole new repertoire of math games that help to introduce, reinforce, and/or practice third grade […]
