**Greetings everyone! January has been one crazy month!! We have had snow, cold, more snow, more cold, cancelled classes and being stuck inside of our classrooms because it is again--too cold to go outside. The students have been real troopers!! We have watched some great stories courtesy of Scholastic Books during our lunch hour and used our choice time wisely experimenting at the water table, creating with marble works, reading, writing drawing and challenging our brains the with app TenZen Lite! It has been a busy two weeks for me and my energetic class. I so enjoyed my "home visit" conferences during the frigid weather. Thanks for your participation at Parent Teacher Conferences. It was great to chat with all of you and share your child's progress. If you did not have a chance to reschedule your conference, I will email you this weekend to set a date and time.
**I will back track a little to cover the past 2 weeks of events. We did go on our field trip to see "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Day." The students had a great time and really enjoyed themselves. Singing, dancing and acting!
**Our 100th Day/Valentine's Day is fast approaching. Thanks to B. Ahring, B. Barnett, Ms. Cummings (Reid's Grandma) G. Shelton, L. Wojcik, H. Lim, T. Smyth and Ms. Jack who have volunteered to help us out on this special day. Anyone else????!! We would love to have you. Just email me. Our special day is Friday, February 7th from 1:00-2:55 pm. 100th Day Heart projects are due on Tuesday, February 4th. Don't forget.....we are also having an early Valentine's Day that day. Students need to bring a valentine for each child in the class---we have 18 students! Students may bring a treasure or treat for the class that will be placed in their treat bags. All food items we will be using for our food grid and necklaces will be nut free and gluten free. Oh yes.......don't forget your picture of a 100 year old person and 100 day old baby for our presentation board.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 has concluded. You should have received notification of your child's mastery level. Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin on Tuesday, February 4th. At that time you will receive notification of the skill your child will be working on.
**The good news---I explained how the BUSY READER CLUB works to the students. The bad news---We ran out of time today to choose books. So........we will start book check out on Monday!! All the information on the program is in your child's homework folder.
**Our kindergarten class will participate in a program on Dental Health presented by students of the UIC Nursing program. This will take place on Friday morning, February 21st.
**The FUN FAIR IS COMING!!!!!The FUN FAIR IS COMING!!! Play a game with me on Saturday, February 22nd from 11-3 pm. at Irving School. There will be games, prizes, dancing for desserts, silent auction and a "special" presentation. It is a great way to spend the day and help raise money for our school!! Each class will donate a gift basket. Our class basket theme is cooking and baking. Donations and items can be dropped off at school or given directly to J. Flannery. (Colin's mom) The students are decorating 2 kids chef aprons and 1 adult chef apron. Come on....join in the fun!!!!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her unit on the Zones of Regulation. Check out the copy in your child's homework folder. Great discussions by all.
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment, Mr. Packer finished his activity on attributes with small groups. Ms. Gullo introduced TanZen Lite app to small groups.
**NO SCHOOL--February 14th-Teacher's Institute Day and February 17th-President's Day.
**Keep saving those GIANT boxes and COOL STUFF for our space station projects that the students will construct in April. You can send the stuff in after spring break.
This week:
Where do I begin......It was about so many things.......Water, Sink/Float, Bubbles, Ice, counting to 100, counting by 10's, Chinese New Year (hail...year of the horse,) Punxsutawney Phil....Will he see his shadow?????? The students created a sign in chart. The majority think YES, he will see his shadow......Listen on February 2nd for the results!!! Can we take 6 more weeks of winter???!!!Station day activities included word search and word writing, color the code snowflake, blizzard bubble paintings, snowman sequencing, graphing and analyzing winter clothing and water table activities.
Reading/Social Studies: The students worked to complete Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. The students discussed animal babies and animal habitats. They accessed prior knowledge about animal homes they knew of. The students listened to the story,"The Mole and the Baby Bird." They looked at the cover and made predictions about story content. The students discussed the characters and the plot of the story. They made connections in their own lives of having a pet and the care involved. The students reviewed the sight words is and play. We played Sight Word Bingo and students partnered up to create sentences using their sight words and pictures. The students reviewed the target sounds of Ff and Oo. We took the time to do a quick review of all of our consonant and vowel sounds as well as consonant blends and digraphs. Our Robust Vocabulary included HABITAT, RESPONSIBILITY, BENEATH, RAISE, ENTER. The story was reread and the students took turns using the retelling cards to tell the story in their own words. Students practiced segmenting 3-4 phoneme words using their elkonin boxes. Students read the decodable story, "Tap, Tap, Tap." They used a graphic organizer to talk about and record the setting, (where) characters (who) time (when) the plot (what happened) Students came up to the board to record in writing. I read a selection on the oral vocabulary cards called "Hidden Homes." The students discussed the what kind of animals might live in habitats they might not see. Are some homes beneath the ground? The students also listened the informational text, "At Home in the Rain Forest." We had a an interesting discussion on Wild vs. Domestic animals and how some animals could be both depending upon their situation. The students also worked on sound spelling CVC words on their dry erase boards. Workstation activities for the past 2 weeks included working in their activity books, leveled reading about animal homes--drawing pictures and writing about a habitat, buddy reading and discussion about a story and writing and answering questions, using the sentence starter We can and They can to create and illustrate what humans and animals can do and reader's checklist where students read to each other--teacher records their reading and the group listens to the playback to critique.
Math: The students are counting to 100 together. They worked with partners to set up their ten frames to reflect a certain number. How many ten frames do we meed for the number 45? The students work with number bonding for ways to say the number 5. They showed their work using cubes, blocks, markers, pencils, bears. We took pictures of their work using the iPad. Math workstations for these 2 weeks included number writing 0-20, pattern block match, count and record, numbers that come before a random number, number bingo and experimenting with the app TenZen Lite--shape formations, visual perception, thinking skills.
Writing: The students continue to work in their journals with sentence formation. I wrote a sentence on the board from one the journals and the students commented and made suggestions about it. How does the sentence look? Can you read it? Does it have spaces between each word? Does it have an ending mark? Students made suggestions and corrections. We begun work on the "Magic C" lowercase letters.
Science: The students made some great discoveries the past 2 weeks about Water. In their sink or float experiment, the students made their guess and then took turns dropping the particular item into the water. They then recorded what actually happened. I used some big words--displacement (pushing away) and density (measure of mass.) Some groups had different pencils--erasers or no eraser.....Why did one sink and the other float? Why did the cork keep floating even after someone pushed it down? Why did the washer go straight to the bottom. Lots of discussion. Their science reflection journals had lots of sketches and thoughts. The students explored BUBBLES. What makes a bubble? The students learned that a bubble is a thin layer of liquid (soapy water) that is surrounded by air (gas.) The outside layer is like a skin. The students examined various bubble wands. Some were circular, square, heart shaped and oval. The question posed to them was, "What shape will the bubbles be when blown out each wand? With our wands and soapy water, we ventured outside. It was bubbles mania!!! The students used the wands and blew bubbles. They noticed that all the bubbles were round no matter what the shape of the wand. While it was cold, the bubbles did not freeze but were slowed down. They kind of "hung " in the air. I turned the bubble machine on and the students had fun chasing the slow bubbles. Back in the classroom, the students recorded their adventure. What made the bubbles pop???? Philippe said, "The water around the bubble evaporates!" WOW! Pop! Lastly, the student created ice by each table setting out a bottle of water with a foil lid. Today--we had ice and a little dome of water on the top of the bottle. "The water got out of the bottle," said Julia. We talked about the word-- expand. Cool!
Technology: In reading small groups the apps iTalk, Rocket Speller, Sight Words, I Write Words, Magic Reading 3 and Montessori Crossword were use to enhance segmenting/blending and word practice and beginning fluency. In math small group and individual work the apps Number Find, 100's Board, Math Bug were used to enhance place value, adding, number order. The students are loving their exploration of TanZen Lite using tangrams to work on critical thinking skills, problem solving and visual/spatial relationships as well as shape recognition. There is great site on Ground Hog Day that we looked at. The students enjoyed looking at measurements of precipitation (water) that is on the ground now courtesy of Weatherunderground.
Literature: "A Drop of Water--Bubbles," "Have you Filled Your Bucket Today," "Go to Sleep Ground Hog," "50 Degrees Below Zero," "Celebrating the Chinese New Year," "Bringing in the New Year," "Some Things Float," "Why Does It Sink?" "The Reason for Seasons," "Curious George's Snowy Day."
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