Valentine's Day Fun!

 

Our Valentine's fun started off with a writing project where we finished the sentence "Something I will love forever is....." After discussing what it was we would love forever, the class wrote the end of the sentence on the paper and shared what they wrote. We finished the activity by gluing our sentence onto a bear and heart we cut out. Too cute!

Next, we took out the Valentine's we brought for our friends and began to deliver them to each mail bag. This was one of the class's favorite parts of the day. They enjoyed being the "mailmen" for the day!



























To finish the day we took plain sugar cookies and decorated them with icing, sprinkles and M&M's! This activity was a close second as their favorite Valentine activity.


























 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! 

Please Bee Mine

Last week during our whole group writing instruction time we completed a letter to our school about Valentine's Day. Below is the letter we wrote as a class, as well as adorable bumble bees we made during craft time on Friday afternoon!

 

"February 9, 2012

Dear Mayflower,

We love you! Will you be my valentine?

Love,

Mrs. Brown's Class"

CAFE Review--Beginning, Middle & End of a Story

Today we reviewed a previously taught comprehension strategy called "Beginning, Middle and End of a Story". We discussed what the strategy meant before reading the story. I drew three boxes on the board and gave the class a purpose when listening to the story. They were to listen for what happens in each part of the story so we could fill in the boxes after reading. We read the story Olive My Love and afterward discussed what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story. They did a GREAT job with this!

 



The Muffin Man

Dental Health Week

This week we studied all about ways to keep our teeth healthy and clean. February is National Children's Dental Health Month. We read several books and on Friday we completed a page where we each drew items that we learned keep our teeth healthy and clean. We also watched a fun video/song about brushing our teeth.

Work on Writing

During Work on Writing, the students usually have the option for a free write in their journals. This week, I placed a new option for them to choose from. Every month I put up a new monthly words poster in our word work/writing area. Students can take a paper from the folder below the poster and use one of the words in a sentence. After writing the sentence, they draw a picture! When the rotation is over they show me their writing and if they are finished they can take it home that day. If they are not finished, they simply put the paper in their book box to return and finish the next time they choose Work on Writing.

Daily 5 Math!

Below are two new items in our Daily 5 math choices for Number Work and Math with Someone. The first few pictures are of two students who are using a number line to help solve addition problems. They also write the addition problem as they are solving. The last picture is of two students who first took a bag of shapes and sorted them according to same size and then created a picture to draw using the shapes. Both new items have been major hits during our math time this week!

What's Shakin' in Room 26??

Today we had our first Earthquake drill. We watched a few video clips of other students practicing this drill before we practiced. The three main words we are to remember when practicing for an earthquake are drop, cover and hold on. The class did an excellent job during our school wide earthquake drill on Tuesday!

Math with Someone

A new activity at our Math with Someone choice involves students taking turns rolling two dice. One dice as the regular dots on each of the sides, the other dice as either a 1 or a 0. They are to add the two numbers together and put a chip in the spot on the graph of their correct answer. The goal is to try and read the top of the graph for one or more of the numbers!

Penguins, Penguins, Penguins!

After studying penguins this week we came up with a list of things we learned....

• They swim in the ocean to find food.
• They lay 1 or 2 eggs.
• The Emperor Penguin is the biggest.
• They find a mate and touch their heads.
• They can dive.
• They waddle.
• They feed their babies.
• They make noises, but can't speak our language.
• They slide on their bellies.

I Have a Little Wagon

Weekly poem performance!

Groundhog's Day Predictions

The day before Groundhog's Day, we made predictions as to if we thought Phil the groundhog would see his shadow or not. After making our predictions, the next day we watched a news clip from ABC news and found out his forecast! If you would like to know if Phil saw his shadow or not, watch the video here.

100th Day of School Fun!

We officially celebrated our 100th day of school on January 25th!

To start off our day, we colored the number 100 and ate a snack after we created the number 100 out of two doughnuts and a Nutter Butter cookie!

Our morning message was about how proud I was that we have made it to day #100, only 80 more to go =)!

During our Daily 5 first mini-lesson, we listened to a story on tape about a how the classroom in the story celebrates their 100th day of school. We compared what the class in the story did to celebrate to what we had planned for our day! We found several similarities and differences.

Our second mini-lesson asked us to count the number of letters found in a poem. We wrote a few guesses before counting the number and found that there were exactly 100 letters in the poem!

During our math block, we created a 100's day hat by putting a series of school buses in order by counting by 10's up to 100.

Another activity during our math block was going on a Hershey Kiss hunt around our classroom. There were 100 Hershey Kisses hidden around the classroom, each with a number 1-100 written on the bottom. It was the student's job to find a Hershey Kiss, say the number and find where its match on the 100's chart. We were hoping to fill the entire chart up, but unfortunately we could not find #87 and #77. Luckily, in the following two days both pieces of chocolate were found!

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To finish off our special day, the students shared the snack they brought in. They were to bring in 100 of something to share with the class. We had everything from 100 pieces of cereal, Skittles, M&M's, cookies, candy hearts and a salty snack. After sharing, each student took their bag and dumped it into the basket with the rest of the snacks.

In the afternoon on Friday, we played a 100 themed game of Would You Rather. Each of the strips of paper were turned upside down and two strips were drawn at a time. We went around a circle and had to choose one or the other and share why we made that choice. The class thought each round was quite silly, but were good sports in having to choose, even if their choice wasn't something they would really like to have. 100 snakes or 100 dirty socks? I sure hope not!