Saturday, September 12, 2015

Week in Review--COLORS/Pete the Cat


We had a very short. but FUN week of learning in room 26!



This year's class is absolutely fantastic (as are all of my classes) but there is something special about this group that they continually are giving me that "Warm Fuzzy" feel at different points in the day. We decided to create a class jar to fill those warm fuzzy moments in and when the jar gets filled up the class will be rewarded with a prize. We have a prize envelope where we will draw a class prize. Some of the possibilities are having a popcorn party, lunch in the classroom, extra recess and even a trip to Disney World :). Somehow that trip to Disney has never been pulled from the envelope, but maybe this is the year!

The "Warm Fuzzies".



Reading:
This week in reading we practiced and learned two very important new things to our Daily 5/CAFE time. One of the first things we learned was our fourth choice called "Read to Someone". This choice allows students the opportunity to share books from their book box with a partner in class. A few things they focus on other than reading their book to their partner is to always sit EEKK (elbow, elbow, knee, knee) with their partner. Sitting this way helps make sure the students are able to share the book so both can see the pages and keeps them in one spot during the round. A few other reminders are to read quietly, read one book at a time and to be a good listener. They absolutely LOVED having this new choice and it took very little time to build their stamina past 10 minutes!

The second thing the class learned this week was how to shop for new books for their book boxes from two areas in our classroom. One area has baskets of different levels of books. Right now, most of the class is picking from the Pre-A and Level A baskets but will be moving up to the higher levels in no time. I have no doubt about that! These kids are super readers already! The other area is our classroom bookcase. This book case holds those very special and coveted books that I, Mrs. Brown, reads to the class during read alouds. These books are so very special because they are books the students hear, can retell and remember laughing and learning from. We practiced shopping for books and the smiles on their faces when they had the option to choose a book that was of interest to them was priceless. Starting next week, students will have a specific day each week where they shop for new books first thing in the morning.



































Writing:
This week we continued our practice going through the letters of the alphabet. Our focus for these four days were the letters Pp, Rr, Nn and Mm. We had a lot of fun reading, singing, categorizing, cutting/gluing, painting and much more with these letters! On Tuesday, we glued popcorn to a large P, painted a rainbow with our watercolor paints for the letter R, made a fruit loop necklace for N and made an M hat that had a lot of pictures of things that start with the letter M!


















































Math:
Math this week was a LOT of fun finding the various ways to make and show numbers 1-5. We wrote the number, the number word, drew shapes the correct number of times, wrote the number the way it looks on a dice and wrote a number line and circled our number of the day. This activity will be something we do almost every day and we will add more items to show the number as the year goes on and will eventually work with numbers up to 20!

(I did not get any pictures of this activity but will be sure to next week!)

Next Week:
  • In reading we will learn the CAFE strategy "Math pictures to words".
  • In writing we will continue with letters in the alphabet.
  • In math we will focus on finding different ways to show the numbers 6-10!
  • Our theme next week is all about the author Mo Willems!
Important Dates/Information:
  • 9/16 School Pictures
  • 9/30 Field Trip to Exploration Acres (please send in money)
  • 10/9 End of First 9 Weeks
  • 10/19-10/22 Parent/Teacher Conferences