**The snow is falling as I update my blog. Once again, please send snow pants and boots all next week. Perhaps we will build a snowman later next week! I will email you for sure.
**Our BUSY READER CLUB is going great! The students are excited to read to you and their peers. At the beginning of each morning, I have set aside time for BUSY READING and sharing stories with peers. Reading Grandma Mary has also noticed a difference in fluency and decoding. Let's keep it going! Remember....students can record their readers on their reading log. Students need to bring their book back in order to choose a new one.
**Our other helping Grandma, Ms. D. spoke to the students about her travels to the country of Peru. She brought many artifacts and spoke about the people and culture. She also read the students a story containing many facts.
**Our visit with Japanese speaking students from Oak Park High School was really cool. The students spoke about Japan, read stories, taught our class origami and wrote the students name in Japanese. They loved it!!
**I was not able to visit Japan Fest on Saturday, but hope some of you got a chance to.
**We had a fabulous time with our Book Buddies. It is so cool to see the positive interactions and learning going on. We have 2 more movie trailers to complete and then I will email your child's "movie" to you. That are absolutely adorable!!
**100th Day-100 Item Projects are due by Wednesday, February 4th. Don't forget.......please bring a picture of a person your think is 100 years old and a picture of someone you think is 100 days old.
**Our 100th DAY/VALENTINE'S DAY celebration is THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5th beginning at 12:30 until dismissal. Don't forget to send a Valentine card for each child in the class. There are 19 students. Thanks to B. Howell, L. Wojcik, L. Makonnen, C. Cummings, K. Meier, C. Goldbeck, P. Ferrigno and D. Pacelli for volunteering to help. Students can also bring a nut free item or non food item that will be put into a treat bag.
** Don't forget to confirm your Parent Conference Day and Time. I have a few more of you to contact for rescheduling. Parent/Teacher Conferences are Monday, February 9th, Tuesday, February 10th and Wednesday, February 11th. On Thursday and Friday (February 12th and 13th,) school will be in session in the MORNING ONLY. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, bus and Magical Minds pick up will be at 11:00 am.
**We are excited to have Atessa's dad, Chris come to speak to our class on all things "BONEY," on Monday, February 2nd at 9:30 am. Skeletons, x-rays and the like will be part of the fun.
**Hearing Screening for Kindergarten students will be held on Friday, February 6th in the morning.
**The FUN FAIR is COMING!! Irving School Fun Fair is Saturday, February 21st from 11-3 pm throughout the school. There will be games, prizes, silent auction, dancing for desserts and much more. Look for information from our Room Parents on making a contribution to our class WINTER theme basket. It will be a great day! Come play a game with me and bid on some silent auction events sponsored by ME.
**If you have a chance.......go see "SEUSSICAL the MUSICAL" put on by Spotlight Children's Theater. Our own Josie's brother, Matthew and our Book Buddy, Olivia are in it! Next weekend will have the final performances. I am going on Sunday. Can't wait!
**Future Author Visit--Author Aaron Reynolds of "Creepy Carrots" fame will come to speak to the students on Thursday, March 5th.
**Future Field Trip--to Dominican University to see the production of "CLICK, CLACK, MOO!" We will go on Friday, March 6th from 10-12 pm. More info soon.
** In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey's lesson focused on what or who we care about in our lives. The students created a tee shirt ornament with the things or the people they care about written on it. We now have turned our "mitten tree" into our "I Care Tree."
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, the students began work on their own page to "The Most in the World Book." Writing, details--the what, how, why or where and an illustration are part of the project.
**We are getting closer-----Keep saving those GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and other cool stuff for our space station design and construction in APRIL during our Space Theme. You can bring them in after spring break.
This week:
It was all about the culture of Peru and Japan and spending time with our Book Buddies finishing up our getting to know you movie trailers. We also spoke about the upcoming Ground Hog Day. Will it be six more weeks of winter????? Stay tuned. We used our station day time on Friday for working with our Book Buddies on the movie trailers.
Reading/Language Arts: The students are working to complete Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. The students discussed animal babies and animal habitats. They accessed prior knowledge about animal habitats they know of. The students listened to the Big Book story, "The Animal Offspring ABC'S." We discussed what offsprings were. The students use the story as a springboard to discuss what the name of the animal was and where and what their habitat looked like. The students reviewed the sight words in and play. They partnered up to create sentences using their sight words, pictures and punctuation. We continued working on sentence lifting. The students are becoming quicker in spotting what needs to be done to make the sentence correct. They reviewed target sounds short and long o and Ff. We took 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. Students practiced segmenting and blending 3 and 4 phoneme words using their elkonin boxes. Using the decodable story, "Tap, Tap, Tap," the students discussed the terms problem and solution. Students elbow chatted about the what the problem in the story was and how the problem was fixed or solved. I read a selection from our oral vocabulary cards called "Hidden Homes." The students discussed what kind of animals might live in habitats that might not be seen. Are some homes beneath the ground? The students also listened to the informational text, "At Home in the Rain Forest." They had an interesting discussion on Wild vs. Domestic animals and how some animals could be both depending upon their situation. The students worked on sound spelling CVC and CCVC/CVCC words using their dry erase boards. Workstation activities included leveled reader story elements, fluency check, drawing and labeling an animal habitat of their choice, CVC sound page, Rhyme It review and sentence writing, read it and write about the problem and solution, life cycle drawing, write a question about your story....answer your question. We continue our author study on Mo Willems.
Math: The students continued to rote count to 100 and beyond. They worked with partners to set up their ten frames to reflect certain numbers. How many complete ten frames do we need to make 48? Students also worked with number bonds for ways to say 5 and 10. They showed their work using cubes, markers, bears, pencils. The students continue to work on grouping objects by 10's to get to 100. Math workstations this week centered on writing numbers 0-20, playing adding game- Snowball Fight, sorting objects into greater than 10 less then 10 groups and listening to a story problem and illustrating it and its outcome.
Writing: The students are working on placement of letters on a given line. In their homework folder you will find a sheet that gives some guide lines for short lowercase, tall lowercase and letters that go below the bottom line (diving down.) The students worked on their writing project--writing about their snowman sequence using the words first, next, then and last.
Science: The students made some great discoveries this week about water. The student experimented with pouring water into different containers. Question: Did the water remain the same shape from container to container? The students discovered that the water took the shape of the container it was put into. It has no shape of its own. In their sink or float experiment, the students worked with their table mates taking turns first making a guess (what they thought might happen,) dropping the item into the water--observing and then recording what actually happened. I used some big words--displacement (making room, pushing away) and density (measure of mass.) Why did one item sink and another item float? Why did the cork keep floating even though students kept trying to push it under? Why did the washer sink straight tot the bottom? Lots of discussion. Their science journals reflected their sketches, thoughts and comments. Besides our water experiments, the students are also exploring the use of force and motion weaving in some Next Generation Science standards. This week the students are exploring incline planes with slanted or sloped surfaces. They are using our giant marble works sets to design ramps that a marble will go down, in some cases using multiple levels. Very fun to observe their discussion and trials. What works? What doesn't work? Next week--We will finish sink and float and start bubbles!!!
Technology: No new apps were used this week. The students really enjoyed working on their movie project using the app iMovie.
Literature: "Go to Sleep Ground Hog," "50 Degrees Below Zero," "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late," "The Pigeon Needs a Bath!" "Don't Let the Pigeon Finish this Activity Book!" "The Pigeon Wants a Hot Dog," "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus," "It's Ground Hog Day,"
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