Blog Moving!

As of July 1, PVUSD changed our email system over to a Google-based program. This is creating a problem with my access to the blog site, since Blogger is also Google-based. I tried a few different things, but it seems the best solution is to create a new class blog starting with the 2011-12 school year. There will also be a new class website, as the other one was deleted when the email change was made. I will reply to this post with the new blog address and class web address when they are ready!

See you in cyberspace,

Ms. Flores

June 7, 2011

In case anyone checks in on the blog... I thought I'd post about my favorite part of the summer--- reading!!!

I started the summer by lining up the books I wanted to read on a shelf in my living room and making a list of the titles. I have a lot of youth and young adult books in the mix- some of them include:
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Ugly Truth (I read the others, so might as well finish the series!)
Miss Spitfire (a novel about Helen Keller, AR level 5.8)
Among the Hidden (first of the Shadow Children series. According to my bookmark, I have already read the first sixteen chapters, I may have to skim them before continuing. AR level 4.8)
School of Fear (AR 6.2, This was on my reading list at Christmas break also, but I never got to it.)
Hachiko Waits (AR 4.7, This one I could see being a class novel if it is as good as I anticipate!)
Shipwreck (Book one of Gordon Korman's Island series. I have books 2 & 3, will read them also- but only if I like #1)
Notes from the Dog, by Gary Paulsen
Science Fair (gift from Zack at the Scholastic Book Fair)
Surviving Antarctica, Reality TV 2083 (also one of my Book Fair picks, gift from Andrew)
My Life as a Book
The Phantom Toolbooth (AR 6.7, This one I have a small class set of, and my friend used to teach the novel in her 5th grade class. I am reviewing it for consideration as a class novel as well.)

Also, I finished the young adult novel, Switched, last week. It is the first in the Trylle trilogy. I am reading #2 currently. Interesting, but more for a jr high/high school reader than elementary students.

So... What's on your reading list??? Or what have you already completed this summer?
Ms. Flores

Monday, May 23

Today we played some math games. We also read some reader's theater plays.

by Ethan

Wednesday, May 25

By Fathima

We did a reader's theater play.
Our class also watched Fantasia at 1:30pm.
My group did some exercising for PE.
The third graders got back their frogs (glazed).
Have a nice day!

Friday, May 13

Its been a busy week- we had assemblies for a band concert, talent show, and strings concert! The book fair was here this week! And we had a great time today playing games and building with our friends!

Monday, May 9

Website update by Ethan
Today we had 5 events:

• Everyone stayed on green.
• We had an ear test.
• We had a spelling pre-test.
• There was a book fair preview.
• There was a band assembly.
  

Friday, May 6

We had specials and we had the spelling test and math test about time and money. We had reading with the principal. At social studies we were starting a menu as if it was in the middle ages.

by Abhinav

Thursday, April 28

Today when we went to social studies Mrs. Gagea wasn't there, so we had a substitute. We watched Word Girl at the end of the day. Ms. Flores' daughter, Veronica, came today. Otherwise stuff today was pretty normal. This update is from Zoie Burke, see you next time. :)

From Ms. Flores- The class experimented with two musical instruments today, a "string beam" and a kalimba. Ask your student what a kalimba is!

Wednesday, April 27

Today we participated in the Word Girl Definition Competition. As a class, we scored 100% and didn't miss a single question! Three schools were drawn from all of the schools that registered for the competition and they won prizes. We crossed our fingers, but Desert Cove was not one of the prize winners. Regardless, we had a fun time and learned some great vocabulary in the process.

Monday, April 18

Today there was a strict substitute for social studies. We took the final test for In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. The Word Girl Definition Competition is next week, so we are learning lots of vocabulary.

by Carter & Ms. Flores

Wednesday, April 13

Today we had our first day of AIMS testing for 3rd graders. They took the reading and math tests (part 1). First graders worked with Mrs. Reid on math (telling time on analog clocks) and reading (Jr Great Books- The Lion at School). We also performed more sound experiments today by creating sound codes.

Telescope Viewing

Wonderful volunteers from the Desert Foothills Astronomy Club came to Desert Cove to share their telescopes with the students in the self-contained gifted program. Through the use of special filters, we were able to see sunspots and solar prominences on the Sun! A big thank you to Dan and Roger for sharing their time and telescopes with us!

Monday, April 11

All week no homework (except animal research). We learned a little bit about Physics of Sound. We got to do a fun game from China. It was fun cutting the paper.

By Noel

Friday, April 8

We learned about vertexes today and color mapping. Problems like what we were working on will be on the AIMS test next week. Some 1st graders wish they could take the AIMS test too!

by Maxwell & Ms. Flores

Wednesday, April 6

We had Math and Specials. We did research about our animal. We had recess/lunch. We went to the library to check out books or pick up papers about our animal. Have a nice day.

By Abhinav

Tuesday, April 5

Today we watched a webcast about the writing process at the 39 Clues series. We had lunch and recess. The class had loads of fun!

by Anavi

Monday, April 4

We are back after a week off for spring break! Sounds like everyone had an adventure of their own during the week and we will be writing about our experiences. Even our hamsters, Flash and Dash, had an exciting time away from school. They both competed in the Petco Hamster Derby on Saturday, April 2... and Dash came in 1st place! He won a fancy new cage and a fabulous blue ribbon.

Pictures coming soon... of telescope viewing (March 23), awards (March 24), and field trip (March 25).

Wed., March 23

A huge thank you to everyone for making my birthday great! Obviously someone has been paying attention, as my gifts from the class were perfect- Starbucks gift card, chocolates, flowers, a fabulous gift card for dinner out, and my favorite red velvet cake! I really enjoy working with all of your children and my partnership with your families. Thanks for a great birthday. :-)

Ms. Flores

Tuesday, March 22

We had a great day. Study with your child. We had library. Happy Taco Tuesday!
~Ethan

Friday, March 18

Today we had a lot of fun with the hamsters. Mr. Markham came in. We had fun time in Mrs. Gagea's class.

by Carter

St Patrick's Day Photos

We had theme activities related to St Patrick's Day- a math center, graphing activity, writing, reading, and a webquest about St Patrick's Day. Here are a few pictures from the day.

Thursday, March 17

Today we celebrated St. Patrick's Day! We went to Social Studies. At the end of the day, we played SET. We prepared for the presentation tomorrow about hamsters. We had fun today!

by Aruna

Wednesday, March 16

Today Ms. Flores made a bunch of mistakes. We also finished 2 videos. We are now learning about animals. Have a good day!

Ethan

Tuesday, March 15

Today we went up to Mrs. Gagea's class for social studies. We had lunch. We watched Magic School Bus. We had fun.

by Maxwell

Pi Day

After a great presentation about Pi from our buddies in Mrs. Gagea's class, we enjoyed a plethora of pies! We had oreo chocolate, apple lattice, apple crumb, French silk, sugar-free apple, pumpkin, cherry, and coconut cream!

Friday, March 11

Today we switched Math and Grammar and learned a lot about the Parts of Speech. Also during Fun Friday and me and Zoie cleaned the hamster cage and added some tubes that are made of paper towel rolls while the hamsters were rolling around in their balls. They were in their balls even while Ms. Gagea's class was here.

By Andrew

Wed., March 9

Today we played Eggspert and reviewed for our science test tomorrow. We also read and discussed the next chapter of In The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. Shirley finally has a friend- Mabel!

Tuesday, March 8

We did not have science. We learned the good and bad emperors in social studies. We were reading Jackie Robinson and the Year of the Boar chapter five called "Two Black Eyes and Wispy Whiskers". We had fun at school. Ms. Flores's mom came in.

by Maxwell

Monday, March 7

We had science today. We completed a study guide for our test on Thursday. There were papers about a field trip! We also had lunch, recess, and social studies.

by Wyatt & Parker

Friday, March 4

Today was Friday. I cleaned the hamsters' cage with Andrew, Noel, and Ms. Flores. Brady is taking the hamsters home this weekend. I'm taking them home next. We stayed longer for social studies. Have a good weekend. BYE!

by Zoie

Thurs., March 3

Hello, hello! Today we had social studies early and math late. We had fun today.

by Ethan and Zack

Tuesday, March 1

Today we went to the library. Ms. Flores read Wayside Stories. At science we talked about galaxies. We learned that there are three types of galaxies: the spiral, irregular, and elliptical galaxies. At social studies we worked on computers. We had fun today!

By Aruna

Cereal Box Book Reports

The students did a great job creating these Cereal Box Book Reports!

Monday, Feb 28

We read the second chapter of The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson.
-by Parker

Field Day 2011

Field Day!

We had a great time today. Some of our favorite events included: the 50-yard dash, the 1/4 mile run, frisbee throw, softball throw, hula hoops, and the parachute. We all got blue ribbons for participating in the fun events!

Thursday, Feb 24

Today Mrs. Burke came back and we finished our Chinese Dragon Art pictures. We hung them on our bulletin board in the hallway. In science, we learned about the Sun. We learned about the layers of the Sun and what happens in each layer, like solar flares and sunspots. Ms. Flores read us the rest of the chapter "January" from the book In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. Then we watched some videos of Shirley Temple and discussed whether it was a good name for Bandit to pick. Tomorrow we are excited for field day!

2/23/11

Today we made dragons with Mrs. Burke! It was really fun! The hamsters got into the look-out tower yesterday and today. On Friday, Ms. Flores and and Andrew cleaned out the cage and added new stuff to the cage.

- Noel/Andrew

Thursday, Feb. 17

We had social studies. We had a sub named Mrs. B or Mrs. Barbera. She's sixty years and lived in Boston!!!

by Fathima

By Isaac

We had a sub for social studies. We ate lunch. We had recess. We read “Wayside School is Falling down.” We did hamster research.

Tuesday, Feb. 15

We went to Social Studies and learned that Ms. Flores is a goddess. We also went to the library and improved our listening. We all took math tests today. The first graders took a test on measurement and the third graders did the CML competition test.

Yesterday, we had our Valentine's Day party. We got lots of candy. The non-candy things we got were a pencil and a ruler.

By Boston and Ms. Flores

Friday, Feb. 11

Today we got to touch the hamsters for the first time & we saw Mrs. Gagea's a lot! We did a webquest on Chinese New Year & played with our buddies.

by Andrew

Thurs. Feb 10

We had social studies and learned about ancient Rome. We researched Hamsters and We are doing certain questions on Hamsters. You can find the Power Point at pvlearners.net. We watched our 100 Day video.

by Boston

Hamster Brothers- Flash & Dash

Our hamster brothers- Flash and Dash. No decision yet on which one is Flash and which one is Dash.

Monday, Feb. 7, 2011

Website Update, by: Anavi

We had a great day! We played at recess and we ate at lunch. We had social studies. We did a lot of science. It was a lot of fun! We did a spelling test. We got two new games on our handheld computer! We had a lot of fun today!

Friday, Feb. 4

We had lunch and recess. It is Boston's birthday tomorrow. Chess club had pictures taken. Mrs. Best was our substitute today.

Chinese New Year

update by Aruna & Maxwell

Today we celebrated Chinese New Year. Our buddies came down to celebrate Chinese New Year with us. Ms. Flores read stories about Chinese New Year. We ate Chinese food. We were excited for Chinese New Year. We cleaned up. We had fun today!

Wed., Feb 2, 2011

Update by Parker.

We had social studies. Ethan lost a tooth!

Tuesday, Feb. 1

By Fathima & Noel

We had social studies.
We had recess.
We had lunch,
It was a fun day.
We had Word Masters!

Friday, Jan. 28

by Andrew

We had a wonderful half-day Friday! It was so fun even the work was fun!

Wed., Jan 26, 2011

We did fun stuff! Some of us got worried about their 100 stuff. We are not sure about the jar that Ethan brought in.

by Noel

The sweet smell of marshmallows!

What a great 100th day of school celebration! We had a great time today. The students had fabulous projects and presentations. We did 100 exercises, put together 100-piece puzzles, made structures out of 100 mini-marshmallows and 100 toothpicks, made art out of 100 dots, did 100 math problems, wrote about what we would do with $100, read a book about 100 days of school, and had a 100 day snack! Whew! THANK YOU to everyone who sent in supplies to help make this celebration possible (marshmallows, anyone?) and to the four moms who led the centers- Mrs. Altman, Mrs. Hughes, Mrs. Marr, and Mrs. Roth. We couldn't have done it without you!!!

A picture slide show of the day is coming soon... one of our buddies from Mrs. Gagea's class is going to put together the photos into a presentation for us!

Monday, January 24

by Maxwell
We started on WordMasters. We did lots of math. We also did a Frindle worksheet. We went upstairs for social studies. Our social studies teacher is Mrs. Gagea. We have recess at 10:40, then we have lunch. We are looking forward to free time Friday. School is fun. We leave school at 2:30. We also like to go home.

Night at the Opera

Thanks again to the Altman family for inviting the students from the self-contained gifted program at Desert Cove to Arizona Opera's production of Turnadot! Here's Ms. Flores with a few of the students that attended the opera.

Friday, Jan. 21

by Ethan
We had Fun Friday. Today is Zoie's birthday. We had a spelling test. We finished a book. Someone new joined the class.

Thursday, Jan. 20

Apologies to Carter... his blog update didn't get posted yesterday. I remember typing it in, but something must have happened when publishing to the website. Here it is again:

Website update
by Carter

We saw a geography bee today. Zoie's brother Griffin won the geography bee. Noel's brother came in second place. Tyler, Connor, and David also competed.

Wednesday, Jan. 19

Today the class read more Frindle, worked on math, and watched a video about falling objects (rocks) around the world. We also typed our new spelling lists into our handheld computers to practice the words using the Spell Buddy games. Most students took home their handhelds today to practice more at home. And of course, there was more silly stories from Wayside School.
~Ms. Flores

Tuesday, January 18

by Wyatt

went to the library
had a pretest
lunch
did numbers of me
We did have science today.

Friday, Jan. 14, 2011

by Noel

We had free time!! Some of us did some thing fun! We get to take home our handheld. We got to go to assembly. Happy Martin Luther King jr. day!!!!!

Update by Aruna S.

Today Ms. Flores read a book called Wayside School. We had a fire drill inbetween Social Studies.

Wednesday, Jan. 12

By Fathima

We got to take our handhelds home. We had science today. We wrote a postcard.

Tuesday, January 11

By Zoie

Today was a half day. We had no recess today. There was snack today. We are doing a packet on Frindle. We are also reading Frindle. We made paper airplanes and origami. We went to the library.

Monday, Jan. 10

By BOSTON

we had a spelling pretest about food. we did a vocabulary on frindle.

Slugs or Snakes?

OR ????

Friday, Jan. 7, 2011

Dear parents,
We all did our spelling tests today. We got to play on our handhelds, too. We're having weird questions asked to us. Which would you eat between small garter snake or 5 big slugs? Would you rather have a snowball fight against a pro baseball pitcher or play dodge ball against a pro quarterback?

from,
Robert

Spelling Activities

This week students were able to choose from a spelling menu of various activities. Shown here are pictures of two of the options- making words out of Play-Doh and playing online spelling games with the weekly words. Good job everyone! ~Ms. Flores

News from Ms. Flores' Class (Jan. 6, 2011)

by ZACK
We got permission slips to take our handheld computer home. We watched a film about space from 2009. We finished our timeline today. We did two worksheets about adding cash for food and sports. We did a activity about space involving planets and moons. We also played on our handheld computers if we were done with work. We ate chicken and pizza.

Wednesday, January 5

by Andrew

We asked very good questions in science, started Frindle, and had fun!

Tuesday, January 4

Update by Abhinav

We got to know each other more today. We learned how to use our handhelds. We used them for spelling games and you can doodle on them and you can beam your picture to someone else's handheld.

Monday, January 3

Daily summary, by THE CLASS.
We had a pre-spelling test. Some of us got an advanced spelling list. We are starting on Ancient Greece in Social Studies. We ate lunch. We played at recess. We started to get to know each other, but we did not start science today.

Almost time to start again...

I hope everyone has had a great winter break! It is almost time to get started with school again and I am excited about getting to know you all and having some fun in the months ahead. The plan for this blog is that it will become a place that we can post about what is going on in our classroom each day. For now, please take a moment to vote on the poll on the side---- there is one poll for parents and one poll for students!

See you soon,

Ms. Flores