Lois Elhert, Measurement and Maps!

Last week we studied Lois Elhert, a wonderful author/illustrator.  We read Mole's Hill, Growing Vegetable Soup, Hands, Top Cat, Oodles of Animals, Color Zoo, Rainbow Garden, and Wag a Tail.  In writing we wrote sentences after reading some of these books.  One day, we created an animal with foam shapes and wrote to describe our animal with shape and color words.  Two other days we drew a cats and dogs and wrote to describe with adjectives. Yesterday, we wrote about the amazing things our hands can do!  This week in math we started a unit on measurement.  We shared ideas of what kinds of things we can measure.  We measured items in our classroom with unifix cubes. We continued to work at our math zones to practice number concepts.  In social studies we began a unit on geography and studied maps and globes.  We know that a map key gives us important information to help us read a map.  We also began to study the continents and oceans.  We are working hard each week on word sorts.  Our first sort was plants and animals, the second was sorting animals by land, sea, and air.  This week we sorted fruits and vegetables!  Soon we will begin to sort pictures by beginning and ending sounds.  

Christopher was the star of the week!  He brought in some cool pictures of his family and a book about dinosaurs.  Thomas' mom came as the mystery reader this week and taught us all about cool ways animals use their external features like tails, noses, eyes, etc.  

Junior Great Books!

Thank you all for coming to parent teacher conferences this week. I enjoyed meeting you all and sharing how much your child is learning!  

This week our reading and writing lessons came from a wonderful program called Junior Great Books. This program is an inquiry model in which students are able to build skills in discussion, questioning, listening, and writing. The program uses poetry, short stories and folklore to develop deep thinking. This week's theme was "companions".  I've attatched the three poems we read this week in case you're interested in reading or discussing them with your child. Our writing focus was integrated this week as we wrote about something we like to do with someone, what our shadows like to do, and where Pooh and Christopher Robin might go together. 

As we continue to collect, count and analyze data with the question of the day in math, we also started new math zones. A favorite is "Compare", which is a counting game with cards. The higher number each round wins and gets to collect the other player's cards. You can play at home with a deck of regular playing cards!!

This was our last week of the health unit. We focused on brushing teeth, going to the dentist and what to expect at a doctor visit.

In our Media Center lesson this week we continued our study of the difference between fiction and non-fiction as we prepare for a mini research project on bears. We read a story about a bear who got lost and was scared and we drew connections we made to the story. In Computer Lab we tried out some cool new math games. I started a Symbaloo, which is a compilation of favorite websites. This will continue to grow as we visit more sites together. Here's the link: http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/kindergarten576 

Our Mystery Reader this week was Andres' grandmother!! Both she and her husband are retired from the education field and it was so nice to have them visit the class and read to the students. We have a lot of Mystery Readers signed up for November and December. If you have family visiting from out of town and they would like to read to the class, just let me know! 

Eric Carle, Teen Numbers, Healthy Habits and Helping the Homeless!

This week we had an Eric Carle author study. 

We read several of his books but we couldn't get to read nearly enough of them.  He has so many wonderful books.  The next time you're at the public library, check out some of his great work.  In writing we wrote about our favorite restaurant after reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  We wrote about what makes us happy after we read The Grouchy Ladybug.  We also started new weekend journals for the 2nd quarter. 

We've been exploring teen numbers in math.  We represent them on a double ten frame, with pictures, words, tallies, and can identifying if the number is even or odd.  Each day we even break apart the teen number of the day to identify ways to make that number.  We have a cool song we sing too called Numbers in the Teens Have a Group of Ten. See if your child can sing it to you!!   We also introduced a new math routine called Question of the Day.  We use technology called Activotes to secretly select an answer to a question and then anaylze the results.  It's really cool!

Last week I did some testing with students of letters and sight words during literacy centers. I'm so impressed with how much they have learned in two months!!  Guided reading books came home this weekend with almost everyone. We also began a new word study program where students are sorting concepts into groups.  Soon we will sort pictures by beginning and ending sounds.  

We've learned a lot in our health unit about medicine, being sick, washing hands, and colds and the flu.  We continued to study ways to stay safe and healthy this week.  Does your child know their full name, address and phone number? This is important if they were ever in an emergency and had to call 911. Next week we will practice this so you can help at home by reviewing this information with your child. 

The Walk for the Homeless was a lot of fun! 

We had several donations from families and had a good discussion about how you can help your community. 

In other exciting news, the morning announcements are now LIVE on TV.  Pretty cool!!