Friday, February 7

We have had such a fun week studying dinosaurs! Our class has been so motivated to finds answers to their many questions. We have watched a few videos online, looked through lots of books, and talked about what some children already know about dinosaurs.  This week, we learned what different types of dinosaurs eat and how big some of their footprints are.  We worked together as a class to make a mural and we also made clay models of different types of dinosaurs.  

In Reader's Workshop, we have been focusing on predicting.  We read a fun story called Who's in the Shed? Ask your child about this story!  We started making our own versions of Who's in the Shed this afternoon. I can't wait to read the clues and guess what type of animal each person hid behind their shed!

I have been so impressed with the reading and writing that is happening in our classroom.  I am excited every day to meet with my reading groups and see the growth in each child.  Today we wrote stories about a time that we got hurt.  They were so great!  Look for your child's story next week!  

I ordered some new math manipulatively with my budget money and we. Have be engravings. Great time with these new items.  One is a large number line.  Students have been using dinosaurs to add and subtract by jumping up and down the number line.  They have also been rolling a dice and racing to 30.  We got some colored links that the class has been using to count with and make patterns.  We have been focusing on problem solving and simple addition and subtraction this week.

Reminders:

Field trip money is due on Monday. $9.50 for students, $6.75 for chaperones. We have chosen our 2 chaperones already, but there is a field trip in May if any other parents would like to accompany our class!

Your preference sheets for multiage or single first grade are due next week on Wednesday.  (This does not apply to students going to Yahara next year). Please let me know if you need another form!

Wednesday is our field trip to the Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Thursday is our 100th day of school. Be sure to send your child's collection of 100 things next week.  

We have lots of fun activities to do with these collections!

Friday is Valentine's Day! Send in valentines any time next week. We will be exchanging on Friday.

As always, library books are due on Fridays.

Here are some pictures from the week:

Haley makes fossils with our dinosaur toys.

Jacob shows how the dinosaurs fight with each other.

These students are racing to 30 by rolling a dice and moving their dinosaurs.

Our new math links!!

Jackson puts some meat into the carnovore's stomach.

These boys are playing a new math game. Spin the number, make it on a tens frame, and cross it off. The first one to make all the numbers wins!

Here is our mural.  We made clay dinosaur to add to it today and will be painting them next week.  Some children enjoyed playing with the dinosaur figures on this background during play time!

January 2014

Happy New Year!  This is what is coming up in the month of January.

Literacy: We will continue to learn and practice new sight words (January words are do, come, in, and), read and discuss texts in guided reading, and write several sentences.  Duringe writing time, we have been focusing on conventions (leaving spaces between words, capital letter at the beginning of each sentence, punctuation).  In reader's workshop, we will be discussing traditional tales and doing an author study on Jan Brett.  In phonics, we have been reviewing letter formation, sentence writing, letter sounds, and sounding out simple words.

Math: We continue to review and practice writing numbers 0-20 and beyond, simple addition and subtraction, patterning, and sorting.  New concepts this month include symmetry, measurement, and 3D shapes.  We will also be writing our own surveys and collecting data within the classroom.

Science: We have started a unit on polar regions. There will be many opportunities to explore different animals, polar regions, snow, and temperature.  I can already sense the excitement from the class as they read through the many nonfiction books that we checked out from the library.

As always, please contact me with any questions.  I will post more pictures as the month goes on!

This picture shows our math journal activity. Each student had a cup with several math cubes.  They had to count the cubes, find a group of objects in the room that was equal, record the groups in their journal with a numeral and a picture, and then add the groups.

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This is a journal entry from our Jan Brett author study.  Today we compared her version of The Mitten with another author's.  A sky our child about the similarities and differences between the stories.

Math: symmetry       We painted mittens that had symmetry.

This was a fun game we played with partners.  One partner made a picture on one side of the ruler and the other had to copy it to make the picture symmetrical.

They enjoyed checking their pictures with a mirror to see if they were symmetrical.

Last Friday we were finally able to open our stockings from the candy cane exchange.  We had a blast playing several fun "minute to win it" activities.  We also broke open the piñata that the class made in Miss K's class when they learned about Las Posadas.  This is a picture of the candy cane mustaches that everyone got from Logan!

Friday, December 20, 2013

Good morning, families!  I hope that everyone is staying safe in these icy conditions.  I am bummed that we are missing our fun activities that we had planned for today, but we will do them on the Monday that students return to school (including opening all our candy canes from the stockings!).  

I have a couple of videos to share with you.  The first one is my first attempt at making an imovie.  This is from the day that Santa visited kindergarten!

The second video is of the holiday sing yesterday.  A special thanks to Kevin Schmitz who recorded and posted it!

I hope you all have a very safe and happy holiday with your friends  and families.  If I don't see you over break, I will see you all next year in 2014!!!

Santa visit:

http://youtu.be/VN7UMJyylvY

Holiday Sing Playlist (all grades): 

***Kindergarten is video #7!***

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKhozAC08gJtk_vDLkB0tDG613p2ZTSMz

Polar Express Day

Here are a few pictures from all the great activities today, Polar Express Day!!!  Thanks to Miss K for taking the pictures and thank you to the families that donated materials to make this day possible!

Kwanzaa

This month, we will be learning about several different holidays that different people celebrate around the world.  Yesterday and today we discussed Kwanzaa.  Ask your child to sing you the Kwanzaa song and to tell you a little about this African-American holiday!

In these pictures, our class is making beads with salt dough.

Today, we strung the beads and made necklaces!

Math Centers

These are a few pictures from today's math centers!

Jake and Bailey are playing a dice-rolling game.  They roll 2 dice, add the numbers, and remove the marker with the answer.  Once all the markers are removed, they win!

These kids are practicing writing numbers with shaving cream.

This was a fun game that we learned to play on the Smartboard.  You spin the spinner and then move that number of spaces on the game board.  The computer is your opponent.  Whoever lands exactly on the end is the winner!  This was a fun and exciting game for our class!

This is Logan choosing a game on the iPad.  There are several math games to choose from.  A favorite today was a game where the children had to get their character to a certain place on the map using a path of arrows that they designed.  It was really fun!

December 3

Last week and the week before, we talked a lot about families, being thankful, and the first Thanksgiving.  I hope you had a chance to take a look at the Thanksgiving book your child brought home!  On Wednesday at play time, we talked about what it would be like to be Pilgrims with no electricity and few toys.  The class spent play time pretending to be pilgrims.  We played in the dark with wooden toys.  They made a "fire" to cook their food, and they pretended to go hunting for food to bring back for everyone to share.  our class continues to enjoy playing "pilgrims" this week too!

Here are a few pictures from our Thanksgiving unit:

Here are some Pilgrims playing in the dark with wooden blocks and small stones.

This was a little project that Kaitlyn made for me during our Pilgrim play time.  She didn't think they had glue, so she did not glue the pieces together!!!  How cool!

This is our Thankful Turkey...filled with feathers of all the things that our class is thankful for - friends, family, toys, food, and more!

               This is a chart we made about all the different things that families do together.

This is a poster we made about what a family is made of!