Fidget Fun Friday

On Fridays as part of our morning work, the students get to 'fidget' with materials that go along with our theme for the week. We used materials to build with on one Friday and then Play-doh to create animals this past Friday.

Measuring Bats

On Friday, we practiced our nonstandard measurement with BATS! We used candy corn to measure each bat's wing-span. We practiced using our measurement rules: using the same size candy corn, not overlapping the pieces and not leaving spaces between each piece.

Thank you, Firefighters!

Last week was Fire Prevention Week and the ACVFD stopped by our school to talk to us about fire safety. They also showed us their fire truck, the ambulance and they taught us how to keep safe in our home. Thank you!!

Sequencing

Today we did a sequencing activity using the story, Flip. We read the story, determined some important details and then put those details in order.

We LOVE to READ and WRITE!

Who Stole the Cookies?

We used our hand lens to investigate a cookie caper. We made observations of the suspects' fingerprints to determine the person who took each type of cookie. We are great scientists!

Math Explorations

We have been learning about different resources that we can use to help us with math problems. We have explored these tools and strategies during our workshop time. Pattern blocks are one of the many tools we got to investigate. Check out the patterns and pictures we made while learning about the shapes.

Scientists

Wow! Two weeks into our school year and we are learning so much. We became scientists on Friday when we discovered that we do many things that scientists do. We ask questions, explore, try again and make observations. We study how things work and we conduct experiments. We asked lots of questions after we investigated Magic Playdoh. Tell your family all about our discoveries. :))

First Week of School

Last week we spent quite a bit of time talking about good student behaviors. These are the types of behaviors that are going to help ourselves and our classmates achieve success. We focused on how to treat others with respect. We will work on our Leader-in-Me goals again this year. Monday we will review what it means to be proactive.

Moose

Today we read Moose! by Robert Munsch. It is a very funny story. We used the book to practice describing the events in a story. We also worked on blends and sight words. We learned a new strategy in math- making a 10. We used double ten frames to add numbers like 8+6 and 9+7 by first making a 10. We will practice this more tomorrow. Finally, we learned about the life cycle of a plant and acted this out by using our life cycle books. These should have come home today. You can practice reading this tonight!

Homework- Read your just right book and practice your sight words.

Doubles Facts

Today we explored using our doubles facts +/- 1 to solve word problems. We also reviewed telling time to the hour. We brainstormed problems that might happen in a story and then practiced telling a story with a character, setting, problem and solution. We observed our seeds and discovered that nothing is growing yet. We also learned about the life cycle of a plant.

Homework- Read your just right book. Complete the home link.

Plants

Today we learned how to describe a book using details. We practiced this with a simple short story about Ashley who couldn't sleep. We will continue to use this skill all week. We practiced reading and writing words with blends using our decodable reader Ted and Fran. We learned about a doubles plus one strategy in math to help us add more fluently. Finally, we planted our mystery seeds. We will watch them grow and record our observations over the next few weeks.

Homework- Read Ted and Fran and add it to your book box. Practice your spelling words.

The Lorax

Today we read The Lorax and discussed the setting before and after the Once-ler started to make Thneeds. We will compare and contrast those settings tomorrow. We will also use details to describe both of the settings. We worked on word problems in math. We had to decide if we were to add or subtract in the problem. We looked for key words to help us. We also reviewed the needs of plants and created a flap poster to help us remember.

Homework- Read a book from home or do a RAZ story. Practice your sight words.

Plants

I apologize for not uploading pictures for awhile... I haven't been able to download them to my folder. Hopefully when I get this fixed, I will catch up!

Today we used details to describe our setting picture from Charlotte's Web. We learned about telling time using the hour hand. We started our unit on plants and determined the basic needs of plants. We also learned about blends. This week our focus will be on -st blends.

Homework- Read the decodable reader and add it to your book box. Practice your spelling words.

Setting

Our focus for the next few days will be on describing the setting of a story. Today we looked at several setting pictures and used details to tell about them. Then we listened to a part of Charlotte's Web and drew the setting that was described. We will use details to describe our picture tomorrow. The setting is important to the story. It tells when and where the story takes place. We practiced reading and spelling words with the -ng and -nk glued sounds. We will take a test over this tomorrow. In math, we reviewed the skills for the Unit 5 test during stations.

Homework- Read your just right book. Study for your word test. Complete the home link.

Changes

Today we talked about changes in life. We compared and contrasted our behaviors as a baby and as a child. We learned that changes happen all the time but one thing stays the same. Ask your child as they read tonight what the lesson of our story An Egg is an Egg might be. In math we worked on word problems. We practiced using different strategies to solve both addition and subtraction problems.

Homework- Read An Egg is an Egg from the reading text. Bring the book back tomorrow. Complete the home link.

Olivia's Birthday

Today we used Olivia's character traits to choose a gift for Olivia's birthday.  Then we had to cite evidence for the reason we picked that gift. We had lots of great answers including red clothes and a canvas for painting.

Olivia

The last two days have been spent analyzing our new favorite character, Olivia. She is a very special pig that makes us laugh. We created a web about her outside and inside traits. We drew a picture of Olivia using the information we gathered from the book and then we described her traits using our web. We will do one last activity on Monday about Olivia before moving to our next goal in reading. In math we have been learning how to use strategies to find the difference in two numbers. We used a quantity, quantity, difference box as one of our strategies to organize our work before solving our problems. We also took the Unit 2 Social Studies today.

Homework-  Read your poem, Mittens and have your lucky listener sign the sheet.

Welcome Back!

Today we practiced spelling our -ng words with a Roll and Graph game. We looked at several pictures and made observations about the people in the photos. We then used those clues to help us make inferences about their character traits. We used this warm-up to practice describing characters using pictures. Tomorrow we will read a book to practice describing a character with the text and pictures. In writing we brainstormed a list of possible characters for a story we will be creating. We will do one as a class and then the students will write a narrative of their own. In math we reviewed place value using Base-10 blocks, equations, and comparing numbers.

Homework- Read your just right book. Practice your spelling words using the worksheet- Mixed Up.