**The students are enjoying our mini snow hills at Irving. Thanks for your attention to their dress for our lunch time recess. They are having fun and staying warm. Don't forget gym shoes on our gym days.
**I am in the process of updating our Station Day volunteer list to reflect dates until the end of the year. Let me know if there are any new names to add. If you have a specific Friday you would like to come, please email with that date. I have volunteers until February 22nd. The new list will begin March 1st until May 17th.
**Please read the info on our Valentine Party and the Valentine container project. Our Valentine Sharing Party will be Wednesday, February 13th from 1:00-1:55 pm. Students will share valentines, have treats and work on some activities. Family members are welcome to come enjoy the festivities.
**NO SCHOOL on Monday, February 18th in observance of President's Day.
**There will be a Hearing Screening on Friday, February 22nd for Kindergarten students.
**The FUN FAIR is coming! The FUN FAIR is coming! Come play a game with me on Saturday, February 23rd from 11-3 pm. I will also have some experiences to bid on at the silent auction!! There will be games, prizes, food, dancing for desserts, silent auction and a special activity----Who will get the pie in the face????? Stay tuned to see how you can become part of it. Our Room Parents are working on a FUN DAY CLASS BASKET for the silent auction. There is still time to contribute. Items and donations will be accepted until the end of this week. Let's make our basket the best!!!
**Dr. Seuss Family Reading Night is Thursday, February 28th from 6:30-7:30. The sign up form is in your child's homework folder. Let's celebrate the love of reading!
**February is National Dental Month! Amare's mom is coming to give a little program about good dental care on Tuesday, February 26th at 10:00 am.
**Save the Date---FIELD TRIP to Adler Planetarium on Thursday, April 11th from 9:00-1:30 pm. Our next cross curricular theme is SPACE!
**Keep reading the BUSY READERS and recording your books on the reading log. The first 10 minutes of our morning is spent sharing our book with others or reading independently. Oh, the sound of readers!!!
**Keep saving those boxes and cool things for our space stations. We are getting closer!
This week:
It was all about snow hills, Chinese New Year and Tangrams. The students welcomed the YEAR of the SNAKE representing the Chinese New Year. What animal sign were you born under? We read about how the Chinese prepare for the arrival of the new year, cleaning, special colors and foods, lanterns and dragon parade. In a nod to the Chinese New Year and geometry, the students studied tangrams. (ancient Chinese puzzles) More about this in the math section! Our station day activities this week included graphing and analyzing animals in the winter, heart sequence--cutting out and ranking hearts from largest to smallest, teen number review where the students count how many snowballs will fit on the shovel and building 3 dimensional structures using unifix cubes. It was so fascinating to watch young brain power at work viewing a model and then working to solve how to build it. Great problem solving and perseverance to complete the task!
Social Studies/ Reading: The students began Unit 6 Neighborhoods in our Treasures Reading series. They accessed prior knowledge about what a neighbor is and what a neighborhood is. The students made a group list of places and things a neighborhood might have. They listened to the Big Book story, "Russ and the Firehouse." We reviewed the word expository (information) text. The students were reminded to think about story elements as I read the story. Who is Russ? What is he doing at the firehouse? Why is he there?
Our new sight word is are. The students added it to their growing list of words. Our target sound this week was Hh. The students reviewed all our sound toy boxes so far. They work in small groups using words and pictures to create sentences. In the second reading of our story, the students told what they thought the main idea of the story was and recalled details about the work that Russ did at the firehouse. The students summarized events in the story using the retelling cards. They used their elkonin boxes to segment 4-5 phoneme words. They read the decodable story, "Are Caps Hats?" They made predictions about story content. Each student had the opportunity to read a sentence aloud. Some questions to ponder--Could the group hear you? Did you stop at each ending mark? Did you pause at the comma? Where you able to sound blend phonemes to say a word? Did your reading sound choppy or smooth? The students chose a partner to reread the story to. The partners discussed and critiqued each others work using the Readers Checklist. Workstations this week included leveled readers and discussion, word family fun--where you choose from the word family cards-an, at, in, ot, in, it and add a single consonant,consonant blend or digraph to create a word and record it on paper--create ten words and use 2 in a sentence, Montessori Crossword skill groups working on sound blending words with short i, short e and ch and writing about neighborhood places using the sentence starter...I go to the... and drawing a picture to go with it.
Writing: The students reviewed how to write a sentence. A sentence names and tells. They wrote sentences in their journal about the Treasures story, "Russ and the Firehouse." They also began to work on simple prepositions--for, on, at and in and included them in their journal entries. The students had great fun revisiting the use of speech bubbles in writing dialogue. Formal handwriting practice included a review of lowercase letters c, o,a,d,g,s,v,w,t.
Math: The students practiced counting to 100 and counting by 10's. As a group, they are working on counting by 2's and 5's. As an introduction to tangrams, I read the story, "Grandfather Tang's Story." The grandfather and granddaughter share a story under the tree. On each page, a tangram becomes part of the story. I introduced the shapes called tans that are used in the tangrams. There are 7 tans. From those 7 tans, many different pictures can be created. The students experimented with their own set of tans and used a set of model pictures to see if they could create the picture from the model. The next day, students were introduced to the app TanZen Lite and chose a puzzle to complete. Lots of great brain work going on! The students had to manipulate the tans into the puzzle space with a light touch. They could also flip the tan over by tapping it twice. Not as easy as it looks! Very challenging!! I observed amazing concentration and determination to keep trying! The look on their faces when they have all the pieces in place--priceless!! A follow up project is part of their homework.The students continue to work in their math process journals.
Science: The students talked about the experiments they have done so far. They noted also that the water bottles that once held ice and then water were now low in water. Students used the word evaporation. The students know water as a liquid and a solid. Another property of water is as a gas. We discussed freezing (32 degrees) and boiling (212 degrees) points and created steam. The students observed the "smoke" or steam coming out of the glass container of boiling water. We marked the water line with a marker. The students also took note of a piece of plastic wrap I put over the glass container of boiling water. Question: What did you observe? Students reported seeing water drops forming on the inside of the plastic wrap and on the side of the glass. Condensation!! The students also viewed evaporation in action when they "painted" with water and paint brush on the blackboard. After a few minutes--where did the water go??? The students reflected both in written and drawing form about their thoughts on the experiments. They will continue to keep watch on the glass container and the water line. Let's see if there are any changes when they come back on Monday!!
Technology: The students main app this week in math was TanZen Lite. While the students were working on their puzzle, the app also played Chinese music that was very soothing to a mind at work. Students continue to use the apps Math Bug, Number Find, Top It-Addition and Underwater Memory in their math studies. In reading, the apps Montessori Crossword, Sight Words, Reading Magic 3 were used in student small groups and with partners. The students continue to work with the app Story Kit to record read alouds and discussions.
Literature: "Grandfather Tang's Story," "Ruby's Wish," "Chinese New Year," "Curious George-A Winter's Nap," "The 100th Day," "Rosa Parks," "One Hundred Shoes," "One Hundred Hungry Ants," "Snow," "Bringing in the New Year," "Water's Journey," "A Drop of Water-Chapter 4-Steam," "Evaporation/Condensation."
No comments:
Post a Comment