**Gingerbread mania, practice for our Winter Concert, sharing our family traditions, so many budding readers and fun times with number bonding were just some of the many cool activities going on in Ms. Gullo's class this week.
**Our 20th Annual Gingerbread Baking, Making and Sharing was a smash!! We could not have done it without the help of our great volunteers--Ms. Meier, Ms. Metz, Ms. Polan, Ms. Constantinescu and Ms. Bell. The students were super charged with enthusiasm and creativity. Lots of time spent on the tiniest of details. Such works of art!! What a tasty treat! We bagged some of our own and shared some of ours with our table friends. Yum! Yum!
**Come One, Come All to the Kindergarten/First Grade Winter Concert on Thursday, December 17th in the Irving Auditorium. There will be 2 performances. The first is at 8:15 am. The concert will be performed again at 9:45 am. Please be prompt so we can begin on time. Stop by our room after the concert for some refreshments and conversation.
**Trimester One Report Cards are in your child's homework folder. Please email me with any questions you may have.
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Craft Fair was great. Hope you had a chance to go. Our own First Grade teacher, Ms. Woodson was selling handmade bracelets. Cool!! There were many things to look at and lots of great buys.
**Research assignments are due Thursday, December 17th. The ones that have come in are amazing!!! They will be displayed in the hallway.
**Please let me know if you are traveling over the winter break. I will prepare a travel journal for your child to write and draw about their experiences.
**We will be getting together with our 5th Grade Book Buddies on Friday afternoon. The 5th graders have planned a project for our kinders! They will make a getting to know you movie trailer. Stay tuned!! We will also celebrate the beginning of 2016!!
**Our class has a SECRET SNOWFLAKE!! We are working on some cool surprises for them this week. Shhhhhhh.........It's a secret!
**This week in Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey conducted a voting session to see what the students wanted to do for our last Friday of the year. Outside recess won out!
** In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer continued to work on a project with the students involving positional concepts.
** In Mr. Degman, Math/Tech this week, the students worked on a project using the app Doodle Buddy creating a number globe with a certain amount of stickers that they then grouped into how many tens and ones. They are up in our hallway.
**School is closed for Winter Break--December 20th-January 3rd. Classes resume on Monday, January 4th.
This week:
It was all about gingerbread, celebrations and traditions. The students did a little research on how the activity of gingerbread making began and why it is so popular at this time of year. Ginger was valuable spice a long time ago traced back to the Greeks and Romans. A cake like treat was made of ginger. As time went on Europeans began using flour, ginger and other spices to create cookies, houses and cakes. The students listened to a number of gingerbread stories. They examined the characters, setting and main events in the stories. They verbally compared and contrasted the characters and the events. How did it end? (eaten...not eaten) Who were the characters? (boy, man, girl, baby, cowboy, wolf, fox, coyote) What happen in the story? They had loads of fun elbow chatting about and sharing their observations. We did a group Venn Diagram comparing the Gingerbread Man and Gingerbread Girl stories. The students discussed a tradition they had in their household. I shared one of my family traditions. The students read about the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah with its traditions and symbols. Some of the students learned how to play the dreidel game. The students also read about Advent and story of Christmas with all its traditions and symbols. They are beginning to see the unifying theme of the use of lights in these celebrations. Candles, strands of lights, the light of the North Star. Next week we will chat about Kwanzaa, Ramadan and Diwali.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading series. The unit began with a question about where food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets and orchards as places where food is found. Some students offered that they had gardens in their back yards in the summer. The students listened to the Big Book, "Apple Farmer Annie." They discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple farmer. Students made connections from their fall theme about apples, types of apples and what you can make with apples. Other students talked about a time when they went to a farmer's market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target words are to and have. We have added these to our growing number of sight words. Our target letter and sound is Nn. The students reviewed the use of nouns and actions words or verbs. They are also beginning to chat about 2 consonants at the beginning or end and even the middle of a word known as a consonant blend because you hear both sounds. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4 sound words using consonant blends. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. Students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content, read it to themselves and then elbow chatted about the characters, setting and main events with a partner. They reread their story to their partner to practice their fluency. Workstations this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency reading and story elements, making new words (substituting sounds) main events quilt, real or nonsense categorization, write about your favorite meal, roll a word family activity and small group story elements butterfly, Reader's Checklist, Montessori Crosswords (short e and ccvc and cvcc words) create and record.
Math: The students worked on rote counting to 85. How fast can you go without making a mistake?? The students continue to work on beginning number bonding or ways to say a number. They began work on composing and decomposing teen numbers 11-19. They worked with Mr. Degman on a special project. This week, the students again chose the activities for their workstations. They measured items in the room using mini gingerbread men, counted how gingerbread men and then separated the group into a group of ten and how many left over, colored by code and review geometric solid shape names.
Writing: The students are working on a writing and drawing project about a gingerbread character. They designed and created their special gingerbread character. Using a word bank of selected words, the students are working on a writing piece to describe their gingerbread character. They are working to begin with a capital letter, space between words, form their letters and place them on a given line. They also are working on reading back what they have written. The students continue work on letter formation. They are working on "Magic C" letters and center starting letters. Uppercase letters G, S, A, I were introduced this week. The students applied what they learned in their orange practice books.
Technology: No new apps were introduced this week. The students are now working on the second part of the app Montessori Crosswords using the crossword puzzle and 4 sound words.
Literature: "The Book of Celebrations" (highlighting Advent and Christmas) "Countdown to Hanukkah," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Girl," "The Gingerbread Pirates," "The Gingerbread Baby," "Gingerbread Fred," "Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "The Gingerbread Cowboy," "Ten Gingerbread Men," "The Gingerbread Boy."
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