Penguin Patch Holiday Shop

Mayflower is in its second year of having the Penguin Patch Shop at school. This shop allows for students to bring money in from home and shop for presents for mom, dad, brother, sister, grandma, grandpa and anyone else that might be on their list! The students had a chance to look through all of the items last week and took envelopes home to have mom or dad help them fill out how much money they can spend on specific family members. Today was our chance to go shopping. We had our envelopes and were ready to shop! The class browsed through the various items on each table, paid for their items and even had each present wrapped to be put under the tree until Christmas Day. Each student was beyond excited to be buying presents for the people who mean the most to them. After all, 'tis the season of giving and not receiving! =)

Word Family Table Names

This week I changed our table names from sight words to three different word families we have been studying during "A" for accuracy in Daily 5. We talked about which table names rhymed with one another and have broken the words up into onset and rhyme, as well as saying each individual sound and blending them together for extra practice when lining up or getting drinks.

Writing with Action Words

Today during our writing time, we discussed action words. We started with talking about what the class was doing at that moment, they were "sitting". We then brainstormed other action words and wrote them on our board. After we thought of several words that describe an action, we completed a sentence about a gingerbread man. Students were told to fill in the missing blanks with two of our sight words "my" and "is". In the third blank, they wrote an action word describing what their gingerbread man would be doing in their story. Several students chose running with others choosing swimming, hopping, skipping, galloping, walking and one gingerbread man was even sleeping!

We Will Miss You!

Today we said goodbye to our two Purdue students we have had in our classroom since the beginning of September. Miss Lambert and Mrs. Spurlock came to our classroom every Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 9:00-10:50. They helped us during our writing time and during Daily 5. We were very happy to have them here to help us and are sad to see them leave. We wished them luck in the rest of school and are excited for them to be teachers one day!






 

Elf on the Shelf

We had a surprise visitor come to our class this morning. When I got to school I saw this book and found an elf hanging out in our classroom. We read the book together as a class and named our special elf friend Candy Cane. Candy Cane is one of Santa's elves and is in charge of watching us everyday at school. He is writing down notes as to who is making good and poor choices in our class. At night, he flies back to the North Pole and reports what he sees to Santa. He makes sure to come back to our classroom before the school day starts and it is our job to find where he is every morning. Apparently, he is going to be in different spots each morning and he might cause some trouble every so often too =). He did tell us one very important rule, we are NOT allowed to touch him. If we do, he will lose all of his magic and will not be able to report all of the wonderful ways we are treating our friends nicely and doing the right things everyday. We are very excited that he is here in our classroom and that Santa will be able to hear first hand how we are behaving in class!

The Polar Express

Going along with our Polar Express theme this week, each student was given the chance to become the illustrator of their very own personal version of the story The Polar Express. Each day we worked on a new page to our book and by the end of the week, the book was complete. We discussed how being an illustrator is a very important job and it is important to not scribble scrabble through the pages. The reader likes to have interesting and detailed illustrations on the page to help make the story even better! Below are pictures that each student chose as either their favorite part of the story or their favorite illustration they drew.

Cookie Jar

During gym class today, we played a game called Cookie Jar. The object of the game was to grab a bean bag and find a dot to place it on. Once you placed your bean bag on the dot, which represented the "jar", it was your job to guard your cookie. If someone came to try and steal your cookie out of the jar, you had to tag them before they grabbed the cookie. If you got tagged, you had to leave that cookie jar and go try and get one from someone else. If your cookie got stolen, you were now on the hunt for a cookie from someones jar!



Number Stories

We have been creating number stories for all the numbers 1-10 this year. After they were laminated, we put them up in our classroom. We have them hanging right by our whole group/calendar area. This spot is perfect because there are several times either during math mini-lessons, calendar or when students are doing Daily 5 Math where we/they can refer to the posters as a reference guide. We will especially be using the "Story of 5" and "Story of 10" during both math instruction as well as daily during our calendar time every morning.

Surfer of the Week Class Visitor!

Our Surfer of the Week this week was Lily M. Her father came in to read two stories to our class today. One story was Olivia and the other was about having friends at school. The student's could not decide which one was their favorite, they were glad they were able to hear both stories. Thank you to Lily's dad for coming in and reading to us!

Did You Ever See a Reindeer?

This week for our poem, we focused on emphasizing (which was also an interesting word we placed in our word collector) various words in the poem to help our voice during reading. We read the poem in a boring voice, as well as our excited voices. We decided as a class that it actually was harder to read in a boring voice than in the exciting voice!

Below is video of the class reading the poem using their boring voice and then emphasizing important words in an exciting voice! I have to admit it's a little hard not to laugh when they are reading in a boring voice. They do such a great job of keeping it one tone and yes, very boring!

Look and Talk

Today we did a look and talk with a page from our math series big book. We described various similarities and differences that we found in the picture. Below are a few of the observations the class made.

• Two bears have bows and two do not.
• Two bears are girls and two bears are boys.
• Two bears have stripes and two do not.
• All four bears have jackets on, but they are all wearing different colors of jackets.
• They all are wearing name tags.
• They all have buttons on their jackets, but not the same amount of buttons. Bob has the most buttons and Dina has the least amount of buttons.
• Two are wearing skirts and two are wearing pants.
• Two are holding something and two are not. But, the two that are holding something are holding two different things. One is holding an umbrella and the other a bag of apples.

Great observations!

If I could ride a train I would....

Our writing topic this week was to imagine if you could travel anywhere on a train, where would you go. I gave an example that if I could ride a train I would go to the beach. The students were given a piece of paper that had the sentence started for them at the top of the page "If I could ride a train I would...." They were to then fill in the bottom portion by using our sight words "go" and "to". Below is a video of the class sharing their writing with their classmates.

More or Less

One of our Daily 5 Math mini-lessons today focused on comparing two groups of numbers and determining which group had more or less than the other group. Students took turns coming to the board and creating various numbers of objects in either box. The class then counted the items in each box and determined which had more and which had less. I then asked the class which box A or B had either more or less. Before moving on to the next set of numbers, one student was chosen to explain how he/she knew one box had more or less.

Retell a Story

We have been reading the story The Polar Express this week. During one of our CAFE mini-lessons that focused on the comprehension strategy "Beginning, Middle and End of a Story" we used pictures from the story and placed them in order of what happened first through last. Before completing the activity we took a picture walk and practiced two other strategies of our "3 Ways to Read a Book". Since we had already heard the story, we used the strategy of retelling a familiar story and reading the pictures. This lesson worked great as both a review as to what happened in the story and in practicing one of our CAFE strategies.

Skip in Place During PEP!

I had to take video of my students during a specific exercise in PEP before the tape changes. When they first started this particular tape, most of the kids struggled with skipping in place. Now that we have worked on this PEP tape every day for a couple of weeks, we have perfected the skip in place. I love watching their faces while they are skipping. They are smiling, concentrating, staring, determination and focused all on skipping in place. Absolutely makes me smile everytime!