Welcome to Magruder Elementary School

    May

 We had a wonderful field trip yesterday to the Virginia Air and Space Museum.  I hope that your child came home and told you all about it.  The students interacted with planes, getting to go inside of an Air Tran plane and pretend to fly it.  They also pretended they were on the flight deck bringing in a plane that had just landed.  They took a trip to Mars inside of a space shuttle, and the best part was the candy exhibit.  They were able to use their senses to guess different smells, learned that honey can be used to heal wounds, learned that sugar is in many materials other than candy, taste test a jellybean (it was root beer), and taste test a sour warhead…it was sour!  They also jumped on a tongue full of taste buds that lit up if you stepped on a salty, bitter, sweet, or a sour taste bud.  Thanks to all the parents for supplying their kids with the appropriate materials for the day and a special thanks to those that were able to come. 

This month in science, we will be completing units on insects, ducks, frogs, and chicks, and begin working on plants.  Our ducks are scheduled to hatch on May 17th.  We also received caterpillars, which we will watch go through the metamorphosis stage as they become butterflies.

  In math, we are finishing subtraction and then we will begin working on time and probability.  In Reading, we will work with the big books, Flower Garden, The Wolf’s Chicken Stew, Machines at Work, and A House is a House for Me.  With these books we will be working on these comprehension strategies: drawing conclusions, main idea, character, sequence, classifying, and compare & contrast.  They will also be working on rhyming words, syllables, letter recognition, and letter sounds.  The students should know these word wall words by the end of May:  the, at, a, I, can, am, is, like, big, in, it, but, look, see, to, up, go, red, yellow, blue, and, my, we, little, have, what, you, one, two, three, here, that, get, where, did, on, this, do, not, are, said, down, help, .  For writing, the students will continue to practice writing their first and last names, writing the letters of the alphabet using the Zaner-Bloser handwriting style, writing in their journals, and learn how to write letters to their classmates.  Each day during calendar time, the students discuss the month, the date, the days of the week, weather, money, time, patterns, and place value.  Please review any of these topics at home with your child. 

Here are just a couple of reminders:

• Please remeber to send tennis shoes with them for gym and recess.  As the weather gets cooler, please make sure that your child's name is on their coats, hats, gloves, scarves, etc.  
• Please sign your child's behavior chart each night.
• Please return baggie books each day.
• Please check your child's folder each night for any important messages and take out any completed work.
• Send lunch money in a plastic bag inside the folder.
• Every Friday is Spirit Day....wear your green and gold!
• Send in "Box Tops" and feed our class "Box Top" fish.