Winter Carnival

We had a lot of fun at the Winter Carnival ! The 5th and 6th graders worked so hard to put together games, challenges and treats for us!

Snowmen

Because we *wish* we had snow to make snowmen, today we drew and painted snowmen from the perspective of a mouse on the ground!

Hair nets!

For our pumpkin bread baking we wore hair nets!

Look back owl

During reading group the other day, Pan and Deacon noticed that we needed a reading strategy buddy who reminded us to look back at a word we already solved instead of figuring out again. I gave them the job of choosing the animal and creating the buddy. So they did! Tomorrow they will introduce him to the class!!

Chester

Chester the puppy came to visit. Thanks Vinny!

Sun challenge

With their science partners, the first graders were given the challenge of creating a sun and recording at least three facts about the sun. Groups were thrilled with the open ended challenge and had 3D suns, painted suns and creatively decorated suns!

You read to me, I'll read to you!

For buddy time today we read! Each buddy chose a book to read to (or with) their buddy.

Thanksgiving celebration

Our thanksgiving celebration was lovely. There were so many special activities going on in the forest. One activity was whittling and creating tree cookie necklaces... Or hearts!

Mice!

We made tiny clay mice in ECO today. Eve told us the story of Frederick the mouse. We were so inspired, we read another Leo Lionni book and made paper mice! Check the ECO site for lots of photos of the clay mice.

Phones

In science we built phones and experimented how to make the sound louder or how to stop the sound!

Application Problems

As part of our daily math routine we solve application problems. To solve these we use the RDW strategy. We Read the problem, Write a number sentence and Draw a math picture. Sometimes we solve them whole group and sometimes independently. Most of the time I read the problem aloud.

First buddy time

We had our first buddy time today. We started to get to know our buddies...

Science

Today we investigated creating sounds with simple materials. We also learned about sound vibrations and how our brains help us hear.

Best ECO yet

This morning was a wonderful time in the forest. Our work time was focused on making our base camp even better. Children chose to help set up a fire pit, build a waterproof shelter for fire wood or set up an area for tool use. The work was fabulous. We also tried sitting in our sit spots and were very successful!

I've set up a photo sharing site that I will invite parents to view each Friday and that volunteers can add photos to as well.

iPads!

Another part of our daily 5 time is iPads. We have worked up to reading to Self for 9 minutes and today tried using iPads with Lexia while others were reading. So exciting. A letter is coming home about using Lexia at home. 

Read to self

Today we started Read to Self- one of the components of our Daily 5 reading block. Students chose books they wanted to read. I introduced 3 ways to read a book 

We made a chart to decide what the kids would do during Read to Self and what the teacher would be doing:

Then we got reading! Our goal today was to read for 3 minutes, with 20 minutes as our overall goal!

ECO day 1

We had our first ECO time today. We settled into the routines that will carry us through our ECO days. Amy and Eve, our ECO leaders met us. We began with a macro drawing in our journals. Then we grabbed our packs and headed outside to play some games and have a snack.

Then we headed up to our base camp.

We sat in a circle and talked about being safe in the forest. We played a really fun Fox and Rabbit game where kids had to hide:

Finally, children had time to play in the forest. It was a magical morning that left us all totally thrilled for next Friday when the theme will be STICKS!

Math!

Today was our second day of math. We played a game where kids got a chance to be a teacher and a student. We were practicing using number bonds and looking for groups within a set of dots!