New Year's Resolutions

At the beginning of the week, we talked about what New Year's resolutions/goals were. We completed a predictable chart filling in our own specific goals for this next year.



Throughout the week we practiced one of our CAFE strategies "Word by Word Matching" while reading our sentences aloud to the class.







To finish out the week, we rewrote our sentences into a speech bubble, created ourselves with a party hat on and placed them in the hallway for all to read our goals for 2012! It's going to be a great year!

Popcorn Party!

As a class we earn surfboards for overall good behavior above and beyond what is expected of us. When we earn 10 surfboards we pull a prize out of our mystery envelope. We earned our 10th surfboard this week and earned a popcorn party!

Stretching Fun!

Our poem this week was called Stretching Fun. The sight word we practiced all week was the sight word "and". It was in the poem 4 times!

Math with Someone--Counting Tiger!

One of the mini-lessons we complete as a class is to practice counting using our "Counting Tiger" which can be read about here. The students pick an animal out of our Zoo Phonics animal bucket and find a spot in the room. They take turns passing the animal back and forth while counting as high as they can! 

Using Apps on our iPod Touches!

The students in the video below are using several various apps on our iPod touches. These apps are reinforcing skills that have been taught in class. Some of the skills below are spelling, rhyming, letter sounds, missing letter, patterns and writing numbers.

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Holiday Party!

December 23rd was our last day of school before winter break. I had several parents volunteer to come and help run a station during our holiday party. They did an absolutely WONDERFUL job with the students and creating all of their adorable masterpieces. Thank you to each of you who came in and those of you who donated something for the party. Below is a video I put together with pictures from the party and our book exchange. Enjoy!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Adventures of our Elf on the Shelf....Final Week!

Our silly classroom elf, Candy Cane, was up to no good his last week with us. Look below to find out the places we found him each morning!


On Monday, we found him hanging out on the Hawaiian lei behind Mrs. Brown's desk.



Tuesday, he was snuggled up under our tree reading a book called The Snowy Day. We think he was wishing for a white Christmas!






On Wednesday, he wrote us a note. During indoor recess the day before Candy Cane was bumped into and dropped his book and fell over. He told us in his note it scared him when he almost got hurt and he was hoping we would be extra careful and be sure to take care of him, but not to touch him because he did not want to lose his magic. He told us that if we kept him safe he would try to bring us snow from the North Pole! When he was taping the note up on the board, it looks like he got a little carried away and got himself tangled up and taped to the wall too!

Thursday, he got into the candy canes and decided to have a snack. The problem was, he is a messy eater! He left crumbs from his candy cane all over our classroom! Luckily, he cleaned it up that night and the mess was gone the next morning.






On his final day in our classroom, Friday, he completed his promise of bringing snow from Santa's house at the North Pole. He made a little bit of a mess and created his own snow angel! He was nice to save some snow in a cup for us to touch and feel. We did not have any snow fall on the ground outside, so he must have really brought us the snow from Santa! We were excited to see the difference in what the snow feels like up north. It was still cold though!








We enjoyed having our classroom elf for the few weeks up until Christmas. We hope he told Santa all of the good things we were doing in our classroom! Before Candy Cane left, he wrote us another note saying he left us a surprise in Mrs. Brown's desk. Sure enough, in the bottom drawer was a bag of candy canes, one for each student. We will miss you Candy Cane! Until next year.....