Math Centers in Ms. Billings class!

We are working hard in math today! Some of us are practicing more, same, and less. Others are working on review centers! They are practicing writing numbers in order and racing to fill a ten frame. At game center they are playing “Who has more” card game. Some of us are getting to play on the computer and practice math. Ms. B’s class loves math.

 

 

HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD GET ORGANIZED

Check out this video that explains how to help your child become more organized.

Creativity Class

Here is an example of what students are doing in creativity class. Mrs. McDonough read the students in Mrs. Crabtree's room the book Chalk by Bill Thomson.  After the students discussed the book the students went to stations and did various activities that pertain to the book. One of the activities was to create a new problem from the story. Here is a picture of students using Lego's to make a new character that could cause a problem in the story. The students also used play dough to create scenes from the story. Another station has students paired up with one student writing about a problem and their partner writing about how they would solve the problem.

WAYS TO MAKE SURE YOUR CHILD IS SUCCESSFUL

As a parent I know you all want your child to be successful at both home and school. I am going to start a weekly advice column on what has worked with my three boys and myself when dealing with school issues. Topic number one I would like to address is homework.
I know homework is a bad word for most families and invokes the thoughts of pulling your hair out as a parent. If you have seen my head full of hair lately, you would most definitely think that is what has caused my hair loss. I have to say homework at the Williams' house is not that bad anymore after I set some ground rules for my children. I blame the hair loss on genetics!

Here is what happens when my children get home.
1. They all head to the kitchen table.
2. They get out their folders while either my wife or myself get them a snack.
3. We go over what happened at school. I try to have them tell me one interesting fact of the day and one thing that was really boring. Doing this opens up the lines of communication for you and your child.
4. My children do their homework and then I check it.

This sounds so simple doesn't it? Well at first it wasn't! There was a lot of crying and screaming, but I never gave up in making them do their homework when they first got home. It didn't matter if there was a game that night or anything else scheduled for the night. The television, computer and video game systems were kept off until homework was completed. A couple of nights of them just sitting at the table and being knuckleheads was all it took for them to realize that they were going to be very bored until their homework was finished.

Once school work was finished they knew they were free to do whatever they wanted to do. Try my strategy for homework and see if it works for you. The main thing is to make sure you stay consistent with what you do and say.

BIG UNIVERSE

On the right side of the page is a link to the website Big Universe. Your child has a password and username that will work at home if you would like to have your child show you what they do in Big Universe.  If you do not have very many books at home, Big Universe has a huge collection of books that your child can read from your computer. Big Universe also has a writing application so that your child can write stories from home. I hope that you will explore this site with your child and let them show you how fun reading and writing can be.

Great First Week of School!

We had a great first week of school at Estes last week. There were so may smiling faces from both the staff and the students. Our new specials were implemented last week and they were hits for the students. We implemented a creativity class where the kids get to unlock their creativity and imagination. We have Mrs. Lovett and Mrs. Daughtry co-teaching the students 21 century skills to all of our classes and helping them interact with real world situations.  This year we look forward to climbing the mountain to SUCCESS!

Estes Pride With The Bulldog Travels

This year the teachers at Estes Elementary are going to wear their Estes T-shirts around the community, city, state and nation to show how proud they are of Estes Elementary. The teachers will take pictures of where the Estes Bulldog T-shirts travel.
We are going to do various activities with the traveling T-shirts such as finding the distance from Estes Elementary to where the photograph was taken. Another activity the students will do is calculate the total miles the T-shirts have traveled from Estes. These are just a couple of activities your child will complete.
Parents and children if you have an Estes T-shirt feel free to snap a picture of you wearing your Estes Bulldog in front of a landmark and then  have your child bring the photograph to school. You never know you might make it on the blog.
Here are two pics of where the Bulldog went this weekend. Mr. Williams took the Bulldog to Gatti Town in Evansville and Mrs. McCarty took the Bulldog to the drive-inn in Reo.

Community Unity

Here is a peek into one of the first projects that our fourth grade students in Ms. Coomes' class are working on. This project involves around finding ideal places for all of their school supplies. If your child is in fourth grade at Estes, your child participated in this project with his or her teacher.

Team Builing in Mrs. Lingerfelt's Room

To get ready for project based learning the students in Mrs. Lingerfelt's room play a team building game called Clutch.

Mental Math

Check out the students in Ms. Thompson's class developing their mental math strategies!

DOWN ON THE FARM WITH THE FIRST GRADE TEACHERS

Here we have the first grade teachers showing how they "roundup" the students in first grade!

All About Me by: Ms. Billings First Grade Class

Here are some pictures of the first day of class from the hard workers in Ms. Billings class.

Project Based Learning

This summer a group of your Estes teachers traveled to Napa, California to get trained on how to implement project based learning.  Third  and fourth grade students will be doing different kinds of projects throughout the year. These projects will vary in size and difficulty.
The whole school will be adding parts of project based learning with the new specials we have created at Estes.  Mrs. Lovett and Mrs. Daughtry are lending their expertises to come together as a team and teach 21st century learnining skills. If your child comes home and talks about the 4 C's of learning: collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking, you can bet they learned it from the 21st century special.  At Estes we have also added a creativity special class for all of our students. In creativity your child will get to explore their inner creative mastermind with various projects.
We are also in the middle of remodeling the old library. We have distributed all the fiction books to various classrooms in the school. With doing this your child now has the ability to get his or her hands on numerous books that they wouldn't have been able to touch or read. We are renaming the old library to The Project and Research Center. The Project and Research Center will house 16 new and powerful Mac computers, project tables, a performing arts area and numerous other special features.
We are excited about this year because of the endless and various learning that will be going on at Estes! This is an exciting time to be an Estes Bulldong. Your child is part of something special that we hope to show the rest of the world.