May 8, 2026

My mom is like a superhero, strong and bold,
She has a heart that is made of gold.

She packs my lunch and ties my shoe,
I love my mom, and she loves me too!

I want to start this week's blog post with a shout-out to all of the moms and all they do for their kids. We spent some time this week reading two books about mothers and their love for their children. The kids also have a special entry in their Weekly News about you all. Make sure to be on the lookout for a special gift too.  On anther note, one child shared a special story about their mom today. It dictated that I defend the mom "just a little" as I explained how sometimes things happen to women's bodies after they have kids. It was a first for me in my teaching career! Your child can fill you in.  

Our young authors officially crossed the finish line of our persuasive writing unit this week by completing their custom Pokémon cards! This wasn't just a fun art project—the written descriptions served as their final assessment, requiring them to use convincing arguments to prove why their character’s unique powers and traits are the best. The students are incredibly proud of their hard work, and rightfully so!

This week, our first graders took a big step toward algebraic thinking by using symbols to represent specific values (1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s). By assigning a unique shape or icon to these counts, students learned to "decode" a string of symbols into a mathematical equation. For example, rather than just counting by ones, a student might see three stars (worth 5 each) and two circles (worth 1 each) to build the equation:

5 + 5 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 17. 

• This activity is a cornerstone of early numeracy for several reasons:It teaches children to see a "group" (like a 5 or a 10) as a single unit, which is the foundation for our base-ten system.
• Students move beyond "counting all" by ones and begin skip-counting to find totals more quickly.
• Translating a visual symbol into a numerical value prepares them for future variables in higher-level math.

Watching them realize that one "10-symbol" is much faster to work with than ten "1-symbols" is always a wonderful "aha!" moment in the classroom! Have you noticed your student starting to group objects at home, or are they still mostly counting things one by one?

The second graders have been working hard on building fluency with complements of 100 and 20. This means they are learning to instantly recognize which pairs of numbers "snap together" to make a whole—like knowing that if you have 64, you need exactly 36 more to reach 100. Using tools like number lines and hundreds charts, students are moving beyond basic addition to see the relationships between numbers more clearly. Developing this "number sense" is a vital bridge to more complex math.

This week we launched our new science unit on water, erosion, and changing lands. We were thrilled to welcome Luke Foley from Friends of the Mad River, who helped kick off our investigation with a fascinating deep dive into our local environment. We started by pondering a deceptively simple question: Where do the rocks in our riverbed actually come from? This sparked a week of vocabulary building as students learned to distinguish between weathering (the breaking down of rock), erosion (the movement of material), and deposition (the dropping of sediment in a new location).

Today, we took our learning into the field! On Friday, the students headed down to the banks of the Mad River to act as "geology detectives." They scoured the shoreline for real-world evidence of deposits, observing how the flow of water shapes the land we live on. Seeing these concepts in action—rather than just in a textbook—brought the science to life and helped the students appreciate the dynamic, ever-changing nature of our local watershed.

NOTES:

*Your child does have their Weekly News Journal in their homework bag.  Please send it back on Monday.

*I wanted to give a sincere thank you to all of you that contributed to our teacher appreciation events this week. IT was above and beyond!

*A big shout out to the PTA is due! This past week they gave our classroom the funds to add some specific books to our classroom library. The kids will love the new additions.

*We will continue to go out as much as we can for science on Wednesdays and Fridays.  Mud boots are a great choice right now.  Please dress your kid for the weather and some river observations.

*We will have our 2nd inspiration Hour session this week. The kids seemed to really enjoy themselves this past week. The rain forced my golf session (led by Mr. Hubbard) to be indoors. I introduced the kids to my indoor bocce set.  We have some ringers within our group.  It was so much fun!

That is all for now.  I hope you have a great weekend.

Peace,

Tommy