End of January

Oh my, these kids have worked so hard this month and have made such A-MAZING progress.  I am overwhelmed watching them grow as writers and as mathematicians in particular this month.  We have focused a great deal on their metacognition and what they can explain to me in terms of their thinking is just blowing me away. They are aware of their thinking and can verbalize how they are coming to various conclusions.  I am so blessed to witness all this!

You have noticed that we added some sentences to our sentence rings.  Most of the kids can now open their rings and thread the new sentence strips onto the rings independently.  This is a great fine motor skill task. Next week we will add some sentences with short e words as we just began our study of short e today. 

 

 

The kids worked on sequencing during Literacy Centers last week after listening to The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett. 

 

Then, they read some Fly Guy books.  I haven't told them yet but we are going to the Weinberg Center to see a play incorporating Fly Guy, his pals and his adventures! 

 

Here are a few shots from Application Centers last week:  Math Center, Reading Center, Art Center and Discovery Center. 

 

Spelling CVC words!

 

It's was so awesome to see TWO big brothers on the UES Morning Announcements this week. 

 

Math Rotations include a "Write the Room" activity which required kids to count various pictures and record them, build and identify numerical values, practice counting from a given number (using a 20-faced dice) and ordering numbers 1-20 to make a VERY CUTE giraffe. 

 

 

Do YOU know the rule as to when to use a K and and when to use a C?

Your children do!

 

Economics... merchants, goods, money, purchasing... interesting SS lessons this week. 

 

Indoor recess (again!)

 

Our third-grade Buddies came to see us and read their non-fiction informational writing that they produced during second quarter.  This was especially timely as we are beginning to talk about fiction vs. non-fiction texts. 

 

 

 

 More Math Rotations from another day.

 Recess number ordering.

 

 

The kids LOVE playing Go Fish!

 

Morning time (before announcements) beginning sound match-up. 

 

 

We worked so hard on the when-to-use-c-and-when-to-use-k rule.  The kids are REALLY getting it and can rattle off the vowels that go with K and the ones that go with C like it's nothing.  Ask them a /k/ beginning sound word and whether it begins with a C or a K. 

We did this sort together on Thursday and I will include it in Literacy Centers next week.   

 

 

The following is a new activity I put out for kids who have completed their Literacy Center work and have a few minutes to try something new before their Reading Group or before we clean up for lunch.  The LOVED these tiles... they choose a word from the bucket and then write a sentence or two using the word.  They ALL were begging me to take their picture ;)  

 

I could not get all the Math Rotations pictures to stay together... here are more from another day.

 

I couldn't help but take a few shots of the kids writing "elephant" today in Phonics.  If you haven't already, check out your child's red folder.  They did this totally independently and the only help I gave them was segmenting the word a few times for them as a model how to do it.  Amazing!

 

Finally, on this last day of January, we read and learned about groundhogs.  We made our predictions as to whether Phil will see his shadow on Monday.  The kids wrote their predictions, the effect of whether he sees his shadow or not and their preference.  I was very impressed!  On Monday, we will see if our predictions match Phil's experience.  Stay tuned!