Surfer of the week!

Mr. Rooze, Cooper's father, came in to share about his job. He is a police detective and brought his badge, handcuffs, walki talkie and flashlight to show the class. He told us about his job and also read us a book called Officer Buckles and Gloria. The class really enjoyed his visit!

Cooper brought in his favorite toys, tractors! He even wore his John Deere shirt and hat to complete his love for farming :)!

Daily 5 Math

Practicing a computation activity the students will use at our Daily 5 math station called "math by myself". We went through the steps whole group and will practice individually tomorrow!

3 Ways to Read a Book!

During a CAFE mini-lesson today, we reviewed our "3 Ways to read a book!". Kindergarteners sometimes struggle during read to self or read to someone because they cannot necessarily read all the text on a page. We practice reading books in many different ways and three of our main ways to read a book are listed below in the picture. This helps the students stay engaged during those stations and also gives them a sense of accomplishment and success as beginning readers!

Warm-up Morning Activity

Before we officially started the day today, I wrote three of the word family words we are studying this week on our ENO board. We read the words together and three students came up to trace the words. We also discussed what makes these words part of a word family.

Daily 5 Stations

A student practicing read to self. He is actually reading his own sentences in his writing journal.




Read to self using a "telephone" to pretend they are reading to someone else. This helps with the noise level and also is another tool that keeps children engaged.



Working with words! This student is pulling sight words and word family words out of his red bowl. He is then writing them on his dry erase board. This student in particular is challenging himself by writing one word and thinking of another word that rhymes with it to write. He wrote the word "tip" and after I took the picture, he added the word "rip".



Work on writing. This student wrote a sentence in her journal and is illustrating a picture to go along with it.





Read to self. This student is practicing "retell a familiar story" which is a strategy from our CAFE board.



Lounging around and reading! I love how this student is really getting into pretending to talk to someone on the phone, while reading her book!




This week, I introduced a new activity at working with words station. The students use a small jar of play-doh and build sight words either on the paper or on the table next to the paper.




This student is working with words by using wikki stix to build sight words and word family words!

How to Keep Teeth & Gums Healthy : Brushing Your Teeth Correctly: Dental...

To begin our study on dental health this week, we watched this video of a dental hygientist explanining and showing the proper way to brush your teeth. The class practiced brushing in circles and not back and forth.

One of our CAFE mini-lessons today was about syllables. We first discussed how the word cat and the word kitten have different syllables. We did the same with dog and puppy. Then I showed the class a picture and clapped out the syllables we heard in each one. After we decided how many syllables, we placed the picture under the appropriate number. We will continue working on syllables all week during CAFE time.

Cooper also brought in a poster with pictures of him and his family. He read his autobiography where we found out his favorite class at school is gym class and he does not like to eat peas! He also wants to be a farmer when he grows up and loves trucks.

Cooper is our surfer of the week. He brought in two rats from his mom's 3rd grade classroom. Her class is studying the rats eating habits, growth and life. His sister, who is in 4th grade, brought the rats down to our classroom. They are named Daisy and Cuddles. They were very well behaved and each student had a chance to pet both rats! I however, kept my distance :).

President's Day Pretzel Log Cabins!

The finished product of our pretzel log cabins!

While illustrating our poem in our poetry journals we looked up a picture of an elephant to help in our illustrations!

To finish our week learning about famous presidents, we made our very own pretzel log cabins! Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, lived in a log cabin!