Random Acts of Kindness

Over the past month our class has been working on being kind , why we should be kind and reading many books about kindness. This past week I gave the children a challenge: to complete a Random Acts of kindness chart. There are 16 small acts that they have one week to complete:

Here's a photo of one child's card for an adult:

 

Elastic Brains

Mollie came to work with us today, teaching us about the parts of our brains and how they help us. We talked about how our brains can change and grow. We made a brain map and brain out of clay!

Spells vile

As a fun way to practice our spelling words, yesterday we played Spellsville. It's a simple, homemade game board that kids love. This would be a fun game to play at home- your child could make the game board and then play with tricky sight words!

Sound investigation

For the next 4 Fridays, we will be conducting a variety of experiments and investigations with sound and light. We will have Laurie joining us in her role as the PTO Enrichment Coordinator. She is helping organize materials and teach lessons. 

Today we investigated sounds. The children had 12 cups filled with objects. On a recording sheet, they made guesses about what was in each cup after shaking it. Ask your child: how many did you guess correctly? How did you guess it? Which cups surprised you?

Publishing our books

To end our writing unit on Small Moment stories, today we presented our finished books. We worked for a few days on editing and making the books as great as possible. Today the students got in small groups and read their stories. Kids were so proud!

Conferences

I am so looking forward to seeing each of you at our conference in a few weeks. I will share your child's progress in reading, math, writing, science and social skills with you at this conference. Please sign up for a time that works for you using this link:

https://www.canyoncreeksoftware.com/scheduler/vt/wwsu/

It is very easy to use!
If there is not a time listed that works for you, please let me know and we can schedule another time.

Thanks!

Argentina Experience

Constancia came to visit our classroom on Wednesday. She had a suitcase full of Argentinian artifacts. We learned a lot about Argentina! Then we made chipas with her. They were delicious! Thanks for sharing your culture with us!

Publishing

It's happening! This week we are finishing our writing unit focusing on small moment stories. Today each student reread the books they have written. They chose the piece they like the best to publish. 

Puzzling with our buddies

Now that our gardening work has come to an end, we spent our buddy time this week doing puzzles! It was a fabulous chance to use our brains in a different way and collaborate with our buddies . We enjoyed it so much, we'll be doing it again next week!

Reading block

One hour everyday is devoted to reading. Your child participates in a variety of literacy based activities during that time. They might choose to do Lexia on an iPad. 

They might be 'reading to self', practicing their reading. They might choose to work on writing or they could be doing an additional phonics lesson, handwriting group, or reading group with me. They might be doing some work with a 'word of the day' or follow up work with a book we read in reading group. Ask your child which activities they enjoy and why!

This is an overhead shot of one reading group hard at work!

Puzzling with our buddies

Now that our gardening work has come to an end, we spent our buddy time this week doing puzzles! It was a fabulous chance to use our brains in a different way and collaborate with our buddies . We enjoyed it so much, we'll be doing it again next week!

Books and more books!

When the latest book box arrived yesterday, we couldn't wait to unpack it. Thanks to so many orders, I was able to order 50 new books for our classroom! 

So exciting! We spread them out and looked at them, we took a minute and chose one to look at quickly. After looking at three, we chose 2 for our book boxes. Thank you for your support with building our classroom library!

Box tops!

Collect those box tops! Today Quinn came to our class to tell is how we can help earn money for the school by collecting box tops. The kids are extra excited because there will be a pizza party for the class that brings in the most box tops. Since we have the biggest class, we think we can win!

Partners to ten

Along with solving mystery numbers in numbers sentences, a big focus in math has been building fluency with partners to make 10. The othr day we played a fun game to practice this. One child held a card on their head and the partner told them the number that goes with their card to make ten. Then the child had to figure out the number! So fun!

Sprints

Have you heard about the sprints we are doing in math? Each day we warm up our brains by doing a sprint. These sprints are different tasks that are timed for a short time (usually one minute). This builds fluency. The children are loving seeing their improvement each day. The sprints change every so often and we are loving them!

Pete the cat

Today we read Pete The Cat. To practice using scissors and glue, we created our own cats and wrote about what we would do in our school shoes. Look for these at Open House!

Exploring materials

Each day the students are exploring different materials available in the classroom. We are discovering different ways they can be used and how to care for them. We have used pattern blocks, unifix cubes, dominoes, tiny sea creatures and bugs and frogs, wooden blocks and more! Ask your child which material they have enjoyed using and how they used it!