Poppleton the Pig

Poppleton the Pig is one of my favorite characters in children's literature. This week the students read the story Poppleton and the Grapefruit by Cynthia Rylant. Ask your son or daughter to summarize the story for you! Each child completed a few different activities to go along with our reading.
First, the students made "open-mind portraits" of Poppleton. To do this, they needed to color and cut out an image of Poppleton and then attach paper silhoutettes to the back. On each paper they wrote about what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Below you can see a few of the finished products.
The next activity that your child should be bringing home today was a collage that everyone made of healthy choices. They cut out images from magazines as well as added some of their own. Everyone had some good advice for Poppleton of ways to stay healthy without eating grapefruit.
The last thing the students did was to observe grapefruit with all of their senses. First, they looked at the grapefruit, touched it, and finally smelled it. Next, they listened to the sound of it being cut and the juice being squeezed from a segment. Last, everyone partook in a taste test. Everyone took notes in their writing journals on this experience. Some children enjoyed the grapefruit, while many others did not; just like Poppleton. Ask your son or daughter whether or not they liked the taste of grapefruit!
You can watch the slideshow of all of the children's reactions to their grapefruit tasting in the sidebar. They also gave a thumbs up or down depending on how they felt about it!

Plants


Our class has begun the first chapter in science. They will be learning about plants throughout this chapter. Last week, each child started their own science dictionaries in which they will include important information, new vocabulary, and predictions/outcomes of experiments done in chapter one. The main ideas in this chapter are:

-There are different kinds of plants.
-Plants need water, air, and sunlight to grow.
-Parts of a plant are roots, stem, leaves, and flowers.
-Flowers make seeds.
-Seeds are scattered by wind, water, and animals.
-Food and other useful products come from plants.

In school, every child planted seeds today. What better way to study and observe plants than to grow our own! Be sure to ask your child about how their plant is doing over the next days and which of the above topics we are covering.