Weekly News (Jan. 27-31)

For a short week, we sure were busy!

All About Me

This week the morning class loved learning about Olivia.  We learned that she loves to play with her Barbies,  and her favorite movie is Sophia the First.  She is a great swimmer, and she is a TERRIFIC big sister!

The afternoon class enjoyed learning about Mario too!  We learned that Mario likes Angry Birds, and he enjoys playing soccer.  Mario also has a dog name Yogui, and he loves spending time with his brother Julian.  We absolutely loved seeing a photo of Mario's house in Germany.  We will are really going to miss him when he moves back to his hometown!    

Math
This week in math the students played a game called Guess My Number, which encouraged the students to use both their problem solving skills and mental math strategies to figure out a mystery number.  The children also brought home their February calendars this week.  Please continue to use the calendar at home to reinforce number writing and other math skills.

Literacy
This week we began reading books by an amazing author and illustrator---Jan Brett.  Not only are her books well written, they are also beautifully illustrated.  Her books are a great way to help students learn how both pictures and words work together to tell a story.  We kicked off the week with one of my favorite Jan Brett books--The Mitten.  When a boy drops his new mitten in the snow, the animals of the forest squeeze inside one-by-one to stay warm--even a big, brown bear!  Then I bet you can guess what happens when a tiny mouse squeezes into the last spot on the bear's nose--the bear sneezes and all the animals fly out of the mitten!  The loved the story and had a great time making their own mittens and animal cards to practice retelling the story.  Retelling practice is a great way for the students to strengthen their reading comprehension skills by using their own words to retell the story.

Retelling of The Mitten

The children also had a great opportunity to practice their writing skills this week.  After reading another Jan Brett book, Annie and the Wild Animals, the children drew a picture of an animal in their natural habitat and wrote three clues about their animal.  The children also had a chance to practice their reading and oral speaking skills by sharing their clues with the class.

The children also learned the sight word are and brought home a new sight word book.  We sang our January song for the last time this week, and a copy of the song was sent home this week too.  

  Have a great weekend!

Thanks for reading!