Wonderful Words!

Our study of wonderful words continues! We have discovered that our love of words is contagious, as many of our friends and family members are joining us in our search and enthusiasm for new vocabulary! Our latest unit revolves around one chapter from the book, Rats on the Roof. Together as a class we read Chapter 4, Eat Your Vegetables, and could hardly suppress our excitement for learning the new words. There was no grumbling in our classroom!
We are dumbfounded by our ability to learn and use new words! There is much diversity in our classroom community, but we all have one thing in common...an insatiable love of words!

Our new words are:

relocate: to move to a different place
ferocious: wild and mean
collaboration: working together
queasy: feeling sick to your stomach
lumbered: moved slowly or clumsily from one place to another
steadfast: loyal or not changing

Accept the challenge to find and use these words on a regular basis!

Roosechet's Fireside Chat

Hey kids! It's Chet Bear...and I'm just cuddled up by the fire like good old Franklin Roosevelt. He used to give speeches over the radio; the speeches were called Fireside Chats. I'm not sending my message out over the radio waves...I'm blogging on my computer. Well, actually this is Miss Hoffmann and Miss P's computer, but they went home and left me with all these things to trace for the upcoming holiday party, so I thought I'd take a break to surf the web a little and do some blogging.

I heard that this week's newsletter included a section about Calendar Math, with some questions that your parents were supposed to discuss with you to see how everything's coming along. Maybe you could answer them all, but maybe some of them were tricky for you. I pay very close attention during that time, so I'm going to type up the answers so you can check to see if you were right...

1. What is the pattern?
The pattern is different each month. This month it goes like this: blue rectangle, yellow rhombus, orange/red square, yellow rhombus. This is often referred to as an "abcb" pattern.

2. Can a square be a rectangle?
Yes! A square is a rectangle. A rectangle is any four-sided shape with four square corners, and squares meet those requirements. But remember, a square is a special rectangle because all four of its sides are the same length. So, a rectangle is not a square. Confusing, I know! It helps me to draw the shapes.

3. What are different coin combinations to make 75 cents?
Note: I'm a busy bear and I don't have all night, so I'm not listing all the possible combinations. However, I will give you a few to get you started.
75 pennies
7 dimes, 5 pennies
7 dimes, 1 nickel
14 nickels, 5 pennies
15 nickels
2 quarters, 2 dimes, 5 pennies
Can you come up with more? Can you think of a way that uses quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies?

4. How do you know if a number is a multiple of 5?
I know a number is a multiple of 5 if I say it when I'm counting by 5's, starting at the number 5. I also know a number is a multiple of five if it ends in a five or a zero (i.e. a 5 or 0 is in the ones place).

5. How can you use "doubles plus one" or "doubles minus one" to solve a near doubles problem?
First of all, a near doubles problem is any equation that has consecutive numbers in it. Some examples are 7+6 or 4+5. Let's take the first one, 7+6, and use it to talk about the strategies. Here's "doubles plus one." I might not have a clue what 7+6 is, but I know my doubles facts very well, so I can use them to help me. Since I know 6+6 is 12, I can just add one to that sum to solve 7+6 (because 7 is one more than 6).
Here's "doubles minus one." Let's use 7+6 again. I know 7+7 is 14, so I can just subtract one to find the sum for 7+6 (because 6 is one less than 7).
This one takes some practice, but when we start adding and subtracting larger numbers, it's really going to come in handy.

Well, that's all for now everyone. I'm going to head down to the cafeteria and see if they left any corndogs sitting out. I'm sure they wouldn't mind if I ate a few dozen or so, and then I'd better get back to work.

Love ya,

Chet Bear

Chet's Family Thanksgiving

Hiya kiddies! Chet Bear again. I'm back from the holiday weekend. I wanted to have that garage sale but A. called and asked me to ditch the sale for the time being and spend some time with her family. I've never really enjoyed cleaning (just ask mother bear), so I put on my favorite green shirt and hit the road with A.'s family. As you will see, A introduced me to a new friend on our trip. He was a little taller than me. In fact, he was taller than me, A., and her brother if we stacked ourselves up like a Totem Poll!

On Thanksgiving Day, I watched the Macy's parade, before
absolutely stuffing myself on a yummy dinner. One of my favorite floats was one of a big turkey that people were sitting on. For dinner I ate turkey, green beans, turkey, milk, turkey, pumpkin pie, turkey, and of course some honey (Come on! Give me a break! I'm still a bear!).

A.'s uncle had a big truck from his glass company and A thought it would be a good idea for me to drive it around. I drove the BIG truck very well -- they thought about offering me a job but I don't think that would be a good idea because I could barely reach the pedals! The day after Thanksgiving, I joined A's family for their traditional drive trough the
Christmas light display at Saluda Shoals park and loved it. There were lights in the shape of Santa and Christmas trees, even sporting goods, but my absolute favorite was Santa's canon that was shooting presents and candy. Don't panic! It was just presents and candies made of lights. (Note: No bears were hurt in the shooting of the light canon.) The next morning, A.'s mom and dad were surprised to find the family's Elf on the Shelf sitting on my lap!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we braved the mall, and
I loved that too. We had hot chocolate at Williams-Sonoma and rode
the carousel and kiddie rides. We wanted to get my picture with
Santa, but Santa was on break, so we got my picture in Santa's chair
instead. First, I had to brush all the crumbs off the chair...that old bowl full of jelly, St. Nick, must have eaten a lot of cookies that morning because there was nearly a whole package of crumbs! :)

Finally, A.'s parents agreed that I could come along with the family and see the Nutcracker. A. and I had to brush our hair (it took me a long time to get all the twigs out) and promise to use our best manners, since we were going to a fancy theater to see the show. I really liked when the Nutcracker came alive. It was pretty great!

We all loved it. After it was over, A. & I got to have our
picture taken with a Dew Drop Fairy named A. We tried to find another Dew Drop Fairy named Chet but there wasn't one! I was a little disappointed but what can you do?!?!