**Once again, thanks for sending our little kinders prepared for the elements. Next week, it looks like we will be outside for recess. Please keep sending snow pants and boots. ALSO.....While we are very comfortable in our classroom, it is very dry in the room. We are getting frequent drinks of water but you can feel free to send a water bottle and a small chap stick or small vaseline for dry lips that will remain in their backpacks. Along with water break we have been having a "chap stick" break too.
**I am holding off on our BUSY READER Club info until this coming Friday. Look for it in your child's homework folder.
**The Friday Night Disco Dance Party was super fun. Mr. DiPaolo was the DJ. There was smoke, glow in the dark sticks and lots of dancing!!!! Thanks to all who could attend.
**Swap, Shop and Read was great. Many students selected 10 or more new books. The milk and cookies were yummy too!
**Reading Grandma Mary came to class on Thursday. She was very impressed with the students reading and comprehension. She will be with us every Thursday until the end of the year. We love her!
**Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin on Monday, January 25th. You will receive notification of the skill your child will be working on and the teacher teaching it.
**The 100th Day is coming!!! Keep working on your 100 item heart. Students are beginning to bring them in. So creative!!! They will be displayed in our hallway. The project is due on February 4th.
**Our 100th Day/Valentine's Day Celebration in Wednesday, February, 10th from 9-11 am. We now have K. Meier, N. Massett, N. Daniel, K. Harris, H. Alvarez, G. Lowell helping out. 2 more volunteers would be absolutely great!!!!!! Think about it!!!. On February 10th, we will also have an early Valentine's Day celebration. The students can bring in Valentine's for the class. We have 18 students total. (11 girls and 7 boys) Students can also bring in a treat (nut free/dairy free) or treasure that will be put in to a treat bag and sent home. Don't forget to bring in a picture of a person you think is 100 days old and a person you think is 100 years old. You can look in magazines, the internet or if you have a family member or know someone who is near 100, you can bring a real photo in.
**Please confirm your day and time for Parent Conference. Parent/Teacher Conferences for Mid Year are Monday, February, 8th, Tuesday, February 9th and Wednesday, February10th. Please note that on Thursday and Friday (February 11th and 12th) school will be in session in the MORNING ONLY. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, District school bus and Club House pick up will be at 11:00 am.
**Japanese Exchange Students will be visiting Irving School and come and chat with our students on Thursday, January 28th at 8:25 am. Japan Fest is Saturday, January 30th from 12-4 pm at OPRF.
**The FUN FAIR IS COMING!! THE FUN FAIR IS COMING!! The Irving School Fun Fair is Saturday, February 20th from 11-3 pm throughout the school. There will be games, prizes, silent auction, dancing for desserts and much more. Come play a game with me! Who will get the PIE IN THE FACE this year??? What special performances do the teachers have up their sleeves??? (silent auction items--I will be taking 4 special winners to lunch at the Junction Dinner. I will also be reading bedtime stories to 2 lucky students in their homes) Bid! Bid! Look for information soon from our Room Parents on making a contribution to our class basket. They are currently working on a theme.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lesson on remaining calm or calming yourself down in frustrating situations. Be a Cool Cucumber!!
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer began a project on being a detective and looking for details.
** In Mr. Degman, Math/Tech, Mr. Degman worked with groups of students on number bounding.
**Keep saving those GIANT BOXES and other cool stuff for our space station design and construction in April. Keep everything at home until after spring break. Thanks!
This week:
It was all about WATER climbing---WHAT!? Check out the science section. Our Water Table will be opening up next week. The students also enjoyed tracking the snow storm heading to the east coast via weatherundeground. Station Day activities included creating climbing water snowflakes, graphing/recording/comparing winter clothing, building from an outline using pattern blocks, snowman sequence and write, snowflake color by code, build a snowman game. (sums to ten)
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. Much of this week was spent on mid year phonemic and literacy assessments. The students continued to work on the same workstations as last week so all students could finish all workstations. Students reviewed all sight vocabulary. They worked with partners to create sentences with words, pictures and punctuation and then recorded them on paper. Students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4-5 sound words. They worked on previous activities relating to short and long o words and consonant blends and digraphs. They listened to the trade book, "The Mitten" and used the Main Events quilt to record the key details in the story. The students did a summative Blueprint Workmat using the text, "Martin's Big Words." The students described the relationship between one of the illustrations and how is helps you to understand the story. We continue to use the "I Do," "We Do," and "You Do" format.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 100 and beyond and now trying to write their numbers from 1-100. They are also working with groups of ten objects to count to 100. The students worked with partners to set up their ten frames to reflect certain numbers. ie-How many complete ten frames to we need to make 48? They began work in their new Story Problem Journals.
The page is projected on the screen. The students read the story and then decide what to do. We are beginning with adding story problems. They record the numbers on their ten frames, illustrate the problem (show their thinking) and then write the number sentence. The students continue to work with number bonds to ten this time using grouping objects of their choice to show a way. Workstations this week included writing numbers to 50, greater/less than "Nuts and Bolts" game, "Build a Snowman" (dice game sums to 10) working on geometric solids recognition.
Writing: Students continued to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters v,w, and t were reviewed. Students used their mini boards to practice and applied what they learned in their orange practice books. They continued to work on their writing project---snowman sequence from their station day.
Science: The students reviewed what they have discovered about water so far. This week, in Experiment 3, the students experimented with paper towel, sponges, wax paper, regular paper and kleenex in wiping up water. They discussed at their table what would be the best to remove water. Lots of conversation and OPINIONS about which one did the best job. Most of the tables agreed that the paper towels and sponges did the best job of "sucking up" (their words) the water. But How and Why???? As the student used their magnifying glasses to take a closer look, they noticed holes or spaces in the sponge and paper towel. Mmmmmmmm. The students then suspended a piece of paper towel on to a dowel rod in a cup. I poured red water into the cup. What Happened? "It looks like the water is going up the paper towel." Discovery.....The water climbs into the holes/spaces....a sponge has large holes. You can also see the holes/spaces in the paper towel. The conversation shifted to other things that the water climbs fast up into. The paper didn't really suck up the water fast. The kleenex got mushy but both got soaked. Each student put a piece of celery in their water at the end of the day. What will happen? The next day......the students took their magnifying glasses and looked very carefully. What did they observe? Some of the leaves of the celery looked red and so did the stem. The top of the celery had red inside. Hattie started the ball rolling by making the connection that when you water plants, the water goes up through the root system. Ahh......could there be spaces inside the celery too? Do all plants have holes/spaces where water can travel? The connections continued with students mentioning trees, plants in your garden must have spaces where water can climb into. What about the veins in leaves? Lots of connections!!! The students recorded their thoughts in their science journals and made sketches of their findings.
Technology: In reading whole and small groups, students used the apps Montessori Crosswords and Reading Magic 3 to enhance segmenting and blending 3-4 sound words, Spelling Bug to sequence sounds in cvc words and Oz Phonics to reinforce sentence word order. In math whole and small groups students used the apps Monster Squeeze, Sam Phibian, Butterfly Math, Number Find and Subitize Tree to enhance visual motor, addition/subtraction, number order/place value, and counting quantities.
Literature: "Martin's Big Words," "The Mitten," "The First Illustrated Science Dictionary," "Snowzilla," "Water's Way," "Curious George's Snowy Day."
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