The snow! It came, and it finally feels like winter! I hope the children get a chance to enjoy the snow while it lasts. :)
All About Me
It was Arya's turn to bring in her "Me Box" this week and share some of her favorite things. The class LOVED seeing Elfie, her holiday elf, and almost the whole class agreed that mac n' cheese was their favorite food too! Arya also shared a tiny model of the Golden Gate Bridge and talked about her cousins who live in California. She showed us a best friends necklace that she and her cousin share, and she also showed us how to write on her Boogie Board Tablet. We all thought that was pretty neat!
Math
This week in math we used our interactive white board to practice solving addition number stories. We also practiced how to record our thinking by writing down a number model ( 6 + 3 = 9 ).
The children were also given an introduction to the calculator. They explored the different keys, and they also practiced entering numbers on the calculator. They practiced entering single digits first and then the numbers 10-20 as well! February calendars were also sent home on Friday. Please remember to have your chid practice tracing the numbers each day. This is a great way to get some number writing practice in!
Jolly Phonics
We began learning the final set of sounds this week, and by the end of next week the students will have leaned all 42 of the Jolly Phonics sounds! Continue to practice these sounds with your child, especially the short and long vowel sounds as well as the sounds with two letter combinations. Having all of these sounds in our tool belt now will greatly support the children as readers and writers. This week we learned the following sounds:
qu as in "quack"
ou as in "ouch"
oi as in "oil"
Literacy
The children are loving our study of author and illustrator Jan Brett, and they can't get enough of the characters in her stories! This week we have been busy writing and making connections to the stories we are reading. We have also been sharpening our comprehension skills by taking a deeper and closer look at some of the strategies Jan Brett uses in her stories to make them more enjoyable and interesting to read. Here are some of the Jan Brett stories we read this week!
We started out the week by reading one of Jan Brett's most well-known stories--The Mitten. As we began reading the story about a boy who lost his mitten in the snow and the animals that burrowed themselves inside to stay warm, the students soon realized that Jan Brett's pictures not only helped tell the story, they also helped us predict what was going to happen next. After reading The Mitten, the students then wrote about a connection they could make with the story. We practiced summarizing the story by creating our own books that showed what happened in the beginning, middle, and the end of the story. Later in the week, we practiced retelling the story using props, and then we made our own mittens with character pieces to retell the story at home.
After The Mitten, we read another of Jan Brett's winter stories called The Hat about a girl who hangs her woolen clothes in the sun to air out for the winter and a hedgehog who becomes embarrassed when he gets one of her wool stockings stuck on his head. After the other animals see how warm Hedgie must be, they all follow suit taking some of the girl's woolen clothes to keep warm. After reading the story, we worked together as a class to compare the similarities and differences between The Mitten and The Hat using a Venn diagram.
We finished up the week by reading Hedgie's Surprise and Town Mouse, Country Mouse and doing some more writing. After listening to Hedgie's Surprise, the students wrote about a time when they were surprised, and they also practiced some opinion writing about whether it was better to live in the country or in the city after listening to Town Mouse, Country Mouse. As you can see, it was a busy week! :)
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