February is almost over, and we have had a lot of fun! On Valentine's Day, we measured hearts with candy, counted and sorted hearts on ten frames, and made a graph with conversation hearts!  We had a really fun party too at the end of the day with fun centers and yummy treats.  We had fun passing out our valentines to our classmates. 

 We also celebrated the 100th day of school.  The teachers all made this cool sign we walked through and each teacher wore a cape with 100 objects on it! 

 At the 100th minute of the day, we did 100 exercises! We also made a necklace with 100 fruit loops!

We also went on our second field trip to The Glen Echo Puppet Theater.  We saw The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood.  Here's the puppeteer with the wolf!

In reading we have been reading informational books about animals, habitats, and community workers.  We are working hard to focus on being able to retell facts after we read, as well ask ask questions.  In our guided reading groups we practice making predictions, word wall words, letter sounds, rhyming words, reading and writing.  Make sure you listen to what great readers we are becoming when we bring home our reading folders.  They will come home once or twice a week.

In writing we have been writing facts about things we learn about in reading.  We wrote about animals that live in the forest, and all the different habitats where animals live.  Now we are writing about each community worker.  We brainstorm what they have, are, and can do and that helps us write sentences.  We will make our own informational book next week about a topic we know a lot about. 

In science we learned about animals and their habitats.  We made a forest right outside our classroom and filled it with bears, squirrels, foxes, rabbits, moose and more.  We learned about how animals have different external features that help them survive in a certain habitat.  Then, we checked out the other habitats made by the other classes.  We went to the ocean, mountain, pond, farm, rainforest, arctic and antarctic.  It was a lot of fun.

Here's a picture of us painting one of our forest animals.

In social studies we are learning about community workers.  We're getting ready for career day on March 6th.  We have about 12 parents who will be coming in to tell us about their jobs.  It should be fun.  Next we are learning about natural resources, goods and services in economics. 

Math has been so much fun.  We had fun measuring the weight, height and length of classroom objects.  We used cubes, links, teddy bears and other tools to measure height and length and used a balance scale to measure weight.  We used words like taller, shorter, longer, heavier, and lighter to explain our measurements.  Then, we began our geometry unit.  First we learned about 2D shapes like circles, squares, rectangles, squares, triangles, pentagons and hexagons.  Now, we're learning about 3D shapes like spheres, cubes, cones, prisms, and cylinders.  It's been a lot of fun.

Natalie's dad was a mystery reader...we were so surprised!

We enjoyed some great author studies in reading this past month.  We read books by Jan Brett and by Rosemary Wells.  Check out www.janbrett.com  and www.rosemarywells.com to learn more!!  We have also had some fabulous mystery readers this past month.  Check out who came to read to our class on Fridays! 

In math we've been having so much fun with measurement.  We made some magic measuring wands and looked around the classroom for things that were longer and shorter than our wand.  Then we practiced longer and shorter with Cuisinaire Rods.  We also measured classroom objects using non standard units such as paperclips, cubes, teddy bears, and more!  We also made some graphs in math recently to gather information on things such as who we thought would win the Super Bowl and if the groundhog would see his shadow!

We added some new fun centers. We love to take turns writing sentences on at Promethean Pool.  We are becoming great writers thanks to Handwriting Hammock.  We love Poetry Palm Tree too!  The sensory table is a big hit at choice centers.  Check these out!

We got to use laptops for the first time!!  Check us out.

Thanks for stopping by!