Well it has been a busy and wet couple of weeks. Between all the snow days, delayed openings, and special events at school, I am surprised we were able to accomplish as much as we did in class. Your children have developed a wonderful work ethic and at times keep me on track. :)

 

All About Walruses

In class we have managed to combine many different themes over the last several weeks. We learned about Chinese New Year (Gung Ho Fat Choy), walruses, the Arctic, the Sochi Winter Olympics and had time to celebrate Valentine's Day.  Many of our Daily 5 centers were centered around practicing skills already introduced as well as some new skills like alphabetical order, CVC words, sentence writing, non-fiction writing (writing for information), and story sequence. The class researched and wrote their second All About books featuring the walrus from Deanna Jump's walrus unit. One of their favorite facts was finding out that the male walrus (bull) will whistle to a female walrus (cow) to get her attention. To accompany their books the children made an adorable paper plate walrus craft. They did such a fantastic job that we had to hang them up in the classroom.

 IHeartCraftyThings.com

DeannaJump.com

 

 

Sochi Winter Olympics

 

Learning about the winter Olympics has not only been fun but quite a learning experience for everyone; including me. Did you know that the colors of  Olympic rings were chosen because every national flag in the world includes at least one of the five colors? Neither did I. We found Sochi, Russia on the world map and brainstormed the best modes of transportation to get there for the winter games. The children and I read about most of the winter sports included in the Sochi Winter Olympics and learned their names. For instance, Skeleton is like Luge which involves racing a sled down an icy track. However, unlike luge, skeleton sleds are ridden face first. And the sport of Curling always gives me chuckle, but to each their own. After the children watched Discover the Winter Olympics with Cecile and Pepo DVD, they each created a page in our Winter Sports class book. I can tell you this much, we have a lot of ice hockey fans in our class this year.

 

Onceuponaclassroom.com

 

     

Flyingintofirstgrade.com

 

 

Valentine's Day

Finally Valentine's Day! And what better way is there to tell someone you like them than by writing them a letter. So during the week we spent a part of our literacy time learning about the ancient art of letter writing. In order to introduce the concept I read Dear Mr. Blueberry by Simon James. We discussed the purpose of writing a letter, the parts of a letter, and the importance of writing good sentences. By this time we were ready to try our hand at writing our first letters. Let's face it....some children do not enjoy writing, so in order to make this fun, our first letters were written to a family member. I have to say I was very impressed with how well the children did and how much they enjoyed expressing their feelings to their moms, dads, siblings, and grandparents. Hopefully, you received your letter by now and were just as excited reading them as we were writing them.

 

Our big culminating project for this unit was our Valentine letters to a classmate. The children were given a classmate to write a friendly letter to. They were to write at least one nice thing about the person and wish them a Happy Valentine's Day. We then created festive covers for our letters to be given out on Valentine's Day. During our Valentine's celebration, the students read their friendly Valentine letters to the class and "delivered" them to their recipients. They were really very sweet!

 

 

Math

We have shifted gears from our math workbook to our Investigations unit called How Many In All. In this unit the children will practice counting and measuring, creating different combinations to make 6 and other numbers (decomposing numbers), learning how to solve story problems, and writing number sentences. In the Investigations series, these skills are introduced and practiced through games and hands-on activities. Therefore, you may not see a lot of  math "paperwork" coming home in your child's Bee folder. But do not worry your children are learning these concepts by investigating and discovering.

 

 

 

 

Kids Night On Broadway

I just have to share this amazing deal with you. It is too expensive to take your family to see a Broadway production ordinarily, but what an amazing experience it is for everyone when you do get the opportunity to do so. 

That is why I am excited about the Kids Night On Broadway promotion which will take place in NYC February 24th - March 2nd.   

Children ages 6-18 can see a Broadway show for free when accompanied by a paying adult. 

Tickets are on sale NOW!! Click on the link below to purchase your tickets and give your children an experience they will not forget.

http://www.kidsnightonbroadway.com/

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It's a Penguin Party!!

Thank you Mother Nature. All the freezing temperatures and snow we've had lately has made my unit on Arctic Animals so much more fun! The children and I have spent the last two weeks studying penguins; the adorable flightless birds. The class sang songs, read poems, and watched live streaming videos of penguins. They also learned some very big vocabulary words: rookery, blubber, regurgitate, and molt. Every year regurgitate is always the new favorite word to use after I teach this unit. LOL!

DAILY 5 CENTERS

Listening

 At listening center the children listened to two penguin stories. After listening to each, the children had to make a text-to-self connection and write about it.  In the story If You Were a Penguin we learn some amusing facts about penguins. The children identified with one activity and wrote about it. In Tacky the Penguin, Tacky is an odd bird who makes lots of mistakes. The children had to write about a time they made a mistake. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that some of their responses were quite amusing.
 

 

Reading/Writing

The theme across our reading and writing centers was penguins of course. The children used the song (poem) I'm a Little Penguin to practice their fluency and expression. Then they took all the information they learned from reading about penguins to write about what they would do if they were a penguin. One student wrote that he would be a good daddy penguin and take care of his egg. Go ahead, say it... Awwww!

   

 Word Work

The children were able to read and sort CVC words into their perspective word families. Most students sorted CVC fish into three word families (-at, -et, -an), while a smaller group sorted CVC penguins into six word families. I am so proud of how much progress the children are making using their decoding skills.

WRITER'S WORKSHOP

 

Having spent a good portion of the last two weeks gathering information and interesting facts about penguins, it was time to write our own All About Penguins books.  After looking at many non-fiction books and identifying their parts (cover, table of contents, glossary), we began filling in all the pertinent information to make our books unique yet informative. The children did an AMAZING job!!                                                      

                                                            

 

 

MATH

 

In math we recently finished our unit on recognizing and writing numbers up to 20. We took it one step further and are able to write number sentences for each number as well. I find that identifying 10 using a 10 frame is much easier than recognizing 10 using cubes or another manipulative. So in the classroom I like to use 10 frames to help us identify groups of tens first and then count how many more we have. For instance: 15 is 1 group of 10 plus 5 more or 10 + 5 = 15. The children are becoming more proficient using and writing number sentences.

 

SCIENCE

To end our unit on penguins and begin our study of walruses, we did the blubber glove experiment. What a fun way to answer the question, "Why don't penguins or other Arctic animals get cold?" The children really got a sense of just how long an Arctic animal could stay in the icy cold waters without getting cold by having a thick layer of blubber (fat). No big bulky jackets needed for them.

 

 

CULMINATING ACTIVITY

 

We saved the best activity for last! All the kindergarten classes gathered together to watch Happy Feet as a culminating activity to our penguins unit. The complimentary goldfish were an added bonus. Waddle on!!