**Our 100th Day/Valentine's Day Celebration was spectacular!!!! The students made a necklace with 100 Fruit Loops with spacers to denote the groups of 10's, stamped 100 hearts with their handmade stampers, turned a "regular" dog into a Dalmation creating 100 spots, created a really cool food grid containing 10 groups of 10 foods, painted a rainbow with 100 hand prints, wrote their numbers from 1-100, began recording 100 words on their papers and passed out Valentines, treats and treasures to their classmates. A HEART felt thanks to our volunteers--B. Ahring, the Flannery family, Reid's Grandma, G. Shelton, T. Smyth, H. Lim, L. Wojcik, L. Nino, L. Pierre and our wonderful assistants, Ms. Jack and Ms. Miller. Our day was really special.
**An awesome teachable moment courtesy of Ben and his Nana---Ben brought in a book called "Recess at 20 Below" about what it was like to go to school is a very cold place and have recess. sound familiar??? No this was not Oak Park....it was in Alaska! Students located Alaska on a map and globe. Many remarked that it was near the North Pole. The story talked about how you prepare yourself to go out and that students do actually go out when it is that cold. The story also described cool things the kids did while outside--sledding on their playground being the coolest. Our students made lots of connections in their own life about snow pants, boots, layers of clothes, red noses, breathing out smoke and feeling like an icicle. We checked Weatherunderground on the computer and compared the temperature in Alaska and Oak Park. Guess what......Oak Park-4 degrees.....Anchorage, Alaska.......25 degrees. What???!! The students were amazed!! What a crazy winter! The students want to ask Mr. Hodge if they could bring sleds to school!
**All students participated in a Hearing Screening on Friday morning.
**Please continue sending your child with boots and snow pants. We may have another opportunity to be outside later on this coming week and want to be prepared.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey and the students discussed and shared their feelings on the topic--"What do you care about?" From our families, to our pets and more globally--our school and our earth, our class cares about many things. The students wrote about and decorated an "I Care" tee shirt depicting what they care most about. We turned our "Mitten Tree" into an "I Care" tree and students hung their tee shirts on the tree. Stop by and see them!
**In Mr. Packer, Math Enrichment, Mr. Packer read the students 2 books on ways to say the number 100. By ones, or two's , or five's or ten's.......what about by 20's, or 25's or 50's.....the list goes on. The students enjoyed thinking and talking about it.
**Keep reading those BUSY READERS and recording them on your reading log. The first 10 minutes of our class time will know be spent reading our books to others or independently. Oh, the sound of beginning readers!!!!!!
**The FUN FAIR is coming!!!! The FUN FAIR is coming!!! Coming play a game with me on Saturday, February 22nd from 11-3 pm. I also have some special items to bid on at the silent auction! There will be games, prizes, food, dancing for desserts and.......a VERY special attraction--3 groups of Irving employees with 3 different performances. This week the coin containers will be set out with pictures of the participants on them. Students can bring in money (any kind) and place it in the container of the group they would like to see get the PIE IN THE FACE!!!! The containers will be out this week, next week and during the FUN FAIR. The performances will be during the last part of the FUN FAIR culminating with the PIE IN THE FACE for the group who collected the most money. Who will it be???? I hear our beloved Ms. Noonan is in one of the groups......I think I heard Mr. Di Paolo, our custodian is in a group.....Stay tuned!!!!! Students can start bringing in money beginning on Monday. There is still time to donate to our Class Basket--"Cooking and Baking Fun." You can send it in to me or give it to M. Ahring. The class will be decorating 2 kids chef aprons and 1 adult apron on Monday. Come on...join in the fun!!!!
**NO SCHOOL on Friday, February 14th--Teacher's Institute Day and Monday, February 17th-President's Day.
**Our class will be participating in a program on Dental Health presented by students of the UIC Nursing program. This will take place on Friday morning, February 21st.
**Exciting News--Our class will participate in the Oak Park Education Foundation's Art Start program beginning at the end of this month and for 5 consecutive Wednesdays afternoons. Our program is called "Cooking History," presented by Kris and Ashley Nelson of Constructive Chaos Culinary Arts. All foods used will be nut free, gluten free and free of any other allergens that students in my class may have. We are in the planning stages. I will send all the details when planning is completed.
**Keep saving those GIANT BOXES and other COOL STUFF for our space station construction in April. You can send them in after spring break.
This week:
It was all about getting ready for our 100th Day Celebration, counting to 100, grouping objects in groups of 10 up to 100, writing numbers to 100 and sharing ways we care about others.
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 6 Neighborhoods in our Treasures Reading series. They accessed prior knowledge about what a neighborhood is and what a neighbor is. The students made a group list of places and things a neighborhood has. They listened to the Big Book story, " Russ and the Firehouse." The students recognized this story as non fiction. They were reminded to think about the story elements--Who is Russ? Why is he at the firehouse? What does he do there? The target word this week is are. The students added this word to our growing list of sight words. The target sound is Hh. They reviewed all the consonant and vowel sounds covered thus far. Students worked in pairs to create sentences using sight words and pictures. In the second reading of the story, the students talked about what the main idea of the story was and recalled what Russ did at the firehouse. Students took turns using the retelling cards to summarize events in the story. They used their elkonin boxes to segment 4-5 sound words. They read the decodable story, "Are Caps Hats/" They made predictions about story content. Each student had the opportunity to read a sentence from the story 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 blend sounds to make words you didn't know? Did your reading sound choppy or smooth? The students chose a partner to reread the story to. The partners discussed and critique each other using the Reader's Checklist. Workstations this week included leveled readers discussion focusing on asking and answering questions about a text, word family fun where you choose a word family--an, at, in, it, ot and add a single consonant, consonant blend or digraph to create a word and record it on paper creating 10 words and using 2 in a sentence, using the app Montessori Crossword for sound blending words with focus on short i, short e and ch, creating a page for a book about neighborhood places with the sentence starter.....I go to a....with an illustration and sentence completion page using CVC words.
Math: Students worked with a partner to group the objects of their choice into ten groups of ten to get to 100. They then labeled each group with the appropriate number. We had 100 cubes, 100 pennies, 100 dinosaurs, 100 straws, 100 sticks, 100 blocks, 100 shells and 100 links. The students continue to work on counting on from a random number, telling what comes before or after a random number, counting quantities, even and odd numbers, number bonding or ways to say a number using numbers 1-6 and using illustrations to tell a number story. They have begun work in their February calendar books.
Writing: The students worked on formal formation of "Magic C" lowercase letters c, o, a, d and slant lowercase letters v and w. They practiced on their mini boards and applied their knowledge in their orange practice books. Our stylus tools are in and the students will begin work next week on writing form practice using the iPad. Students continue to work on sentence writing and organizing their writing using the first, next , then and last format. Many students are making the transition from mixed upper and lowercase to lowercase letters in their writing. They continue to work on spacing between words in a sentence and placement of letters on a given line.
Science: The students talked about the experiments they have done thus far. They noted also that the water bottles that once held ice and then water were now lower in water. Students used the word evaporation. The students know that water can be 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 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 come back on Monday!
Technology: The students main app this week continues to be Tan Zen Lite. The students are enjoying working on identifying shapes from the tans and placing them in the correct place to make the picture. Some very challenging work that develops spacial relationships, visual perception and dexterity. Cool! The other math apps used this week by students were Number Find, Math Bug, Top-It Addition and Geoboard. In reading, the apps Montessori Crossword, Sight Words, Reading Magic 3, iTalk, Rocket Speller and Spelling Bug were used with student small groups. The students continue to locate information on the properties of water thru Brain Pop.
Literature: "The 100th Day of School," "100 Shoes," "Why Does It Snow," "Recess at 20 Below," "Water's Journey," "Water Can Change," "Water's Way," "Curious George's Winter Nap," "One Hundred Angry Ants," "A Drop of Water-Chapter 4-Steam," "Evaporation/Condensation," "Counting Your Way to the 100th Day," "Ms. Bindergarten Gets Ready for the 100th Day of Kindergarten."
