The Three Year Olds continue the study of the alphabet with a different letter each week.  The letters are also reinforced when parents bring in a weekly snack beginning with the letter of the week.  We began “Let’s Find Out About…” where each child is spotlighted on his or her week.  We learn about their families, favorite things and favorite activities.   Learning about shapes and numbers has also kept us busy.  We are all happy and settled into our routine at EDS!  

Pre-K Classses: Mrs. Creque & Mrs. Yearby

Pre-K continues to explore the alphabet. Each week we focus our learning activities on the letter of the week. Activities include language arts and math lessons to reinforce upper and lower case letter recognition, formation of the upper case letters using the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum, and the sound and phonetic symbol for the letter based on the Spalding Phonics program used here at EDS. We do this through play, art music, stories, cooking and scientific exploration. Our annual winter events include Muffins with Mom, Pet Day and a field trip to the post office to mail our Valentines.

 

 Kindergarten: Mrs. Foster & Mrs. Harrison

The Episcopal Day School Kindergarten has lots going on since winter has started.  We have all enjoyed learning our new Spelling Words and taking our tests.  We continue to do our centers each week and focus on reading, spelling, listening, and writing skills.  In Math we are using our manipulatives to count to 100, make patterns, and create designs using our pattern blocks.  For the 100^th day of school we will collect and donate 100 canned goods to our local food bank, and enjoy a tasty 100 day trail mix snack.  Everyone will be busy counting out 100 pieces of snack to help make it.  For a winter activity, we had “snow much fun” using mini marshmallows to make a snowman, we are still hoping for some real snow to make a real snowman!

Come back and visit us again soon!

 

1st Grade: Mrs. McVerry & Mrs. Ridzon

The first graders of EDS have had a great New Year.  We celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday and learned about other famous Black Americans like Harriet Tubman, Ruby Bridges, and Rosa Parks.  After the children heard Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, they learned that he dreamed that his four children would be judge by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.  To help them understand what this means, we compared and contrasted a brown egg and a white egg using a double bubble map.  The children very quickly realized that the only difference between the two eggs was the color of the shell.  When we cracked it open, they couldn’t tell which egg was which.  They quickly surmised that people are the same on the inside no matter what they look like on the outside. 

The 100^th Day of school was on February 1^st and as it is the 1^st grade custom, it was an extravaganza.  Each child made a creation of 100 things, a special friendship snack, licked a Tootsie Roll pop 100 times, played a game with dice and 100 tally marks, used a map to find out what towns were 100 miles north, south, east and west of Southern Pines, read 100^th Day stories and poems, to mention a few.  This year the teachers challenged the students to bring in 100 nonperishable food items to be donated to the Coalition for Human Care.  They exceeded this goal by donated mare than 200 items.  The end of February brings a unit on George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, culminating with a play about what they learned for the parents.

Our daily routine includes a math meeting, phonogram practice, spelling word practice, poetry, reading groups with paired and leveled fiction and nonfiction books.  The children are getting so much out of the nonfiction books.  Our current Earth Science unit is about the earth’s continents, land formation, rocks, minerals, and weather. First graders are using EDS Grocery Store to learn about money and double digit addition.  Our doubles rap has helped us master the doubles plus one facts with ease.   

 

 2nd Grade: Mrs. Broughton & Ms. Hutson

Mrs. Broughton’s and Ms. Hutson’s Second Grade Classes have enjoyed learning about many new exciting things. The classes read My Father’s Dragon, a book by Ruth Stiles Gannett while studying mapping skills. The children wrote and illustrated their own chapter about this tricky little boy making his way to see a dragon. The children made their own town and maps to represent Smileville and Miniville.

The second graders are having a wonderful experience planting tulip bulbs and then tracking the arrival of spring. The results of their study will be recorded on-line with Journey North.

 In Language Arts, the children have been studying synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms and well as subjects and predicates.

In Math the children are learning addition and subtraction facts plus addition with regrouping, time, money and measurement.

Finally during Center Time many language arts, spelling, math, and science skills are reinforced. Some of their favorite centers are researching states and presidents, editing, observing slides under a microscope, poetry, art, and their spelling packets.

3rd Grade: Ms. Monk

 The EDS third graders are having a great year! In reading, the students just finished Charlotte’s Web and are excited to soon begin reading Pippi Longstocking. In grammar, the students are continuing to learn about adjectives and adverbs. They are using what they are learning in grammar to make their writing more interesting and descriptive.  They are continuing to practice phonograms with their spelling and are enjoying a wonderful online program called Spelling City to complete their homework each week.

 In social studies, the students are using the internet, books, and encyclopedias to research a chosen country. They will use this research to write a report and put together a presentation for their classmates. They are working hard and are very excited to show their friends what they have learned!

 Along with Saxon math, the third graders are working hard to learn their multiplication facts! Through a program called Rocket Math they are encouraged to master their facts and are given time daily to show their progress. Soon, we will begin Hands-on Equations which gives the students an opportunity to physically represent and solve algebraic linear equations.

 In science, we are finishing up a unit on plants and their life cycles. At the end of March we will be going on a field trip to the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4-H Educational Center. There we will attend several outdoor hands-on science classes that align to our third grade curriculum.

4th Grade: Mrs. Crickmore

Fourth Grade Curriculum Update

•  Math – studying measurement, including volume, area, perimeter, and different units of measurement.

• Reading – novel study of The Indian in the Cupboard.  Will watch movie when completed.
• Spelling/vocabulary – words come from the reading novel.  They include words from the British culture, such as a “row” being a fight, a “biscuit” being a cookie, and a “boot” meaning the trunk of a car.
• Grammar – finishing the unit on adjectives.
• Science – studying rocks and minerals.  Planning field trip to the NC Museum of Natural Science.  Science fair project work will begin in February.
• Social Studies – finishing the unit on the three regions of NC.  Students will be creating pamphlets/brochures advertising a particular NC region of their choosing for their next class project.
• Writing – studying persuasive writing techniques.  Will be using these to create social studies pamphlets. 

5th Grade: Mrs. Mashburn

 January has been a busy month.  We recently assessed the children on “Forming a National Government” and found that the  children have learned a great deal about how our government works.  They also created a “Bio Poem” on one of their Revolutionary War heroes and have just completed a brochure on people and events of the Revolutionary War.  These are just awesome.  I am looking for a way to display them so lots of people can see what they’ve done.  These were exceptional in how well they used their computer skills to find pictures and format their product, as well as how skillfully they researched the events and then wrote them up, summarizing the information before printing.   The students have memorized the first section of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution.  We went to Mr. St. John’s office earlier this week and recited for him.  He quizzed them on their understanding and was very impressed with what they knew.  

We just finished reading the book, The Call of the Wild.  Next month in reading class, the children will each choose a Black American to research.  They will read a biography of that person and write a summary of their life, also preparing a drawing of that person.  Mrs. P will work with them on that.  These will be on display for everyone to see once they’re finished.

 We are beginning our next science unit on weather. The project they’ll be completing in science this grading period will involve using their digital cameras to take pictures of different kinds of clouds.  They are to take pictures of at least 6 of the 10 types of clouds.  They will then identify each cloud formation and give the type of weather associated with that cloud type.  This info is to be placed on a 14″x22″ poster board, making an attractive and informative poster.  This assignment is due March 16th, which should give them ample time to take lots of pictures of clouds.  I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.  They will then get to take their posters to some of the younger grades and explain the different types of clouds on their poster.