March 29th Newsletter

Announcements
IMPORTANT DATES

Friday, March 30th – March Birthday Celebration & Egg Hunt
Monday, April 2nd – Registration forms with proof of residence due
Tuesday, April 24th – Kindergarten registration for 2012-13 school year (if you have not already registered)
Friday, April 27th – April Birthday Celebration

HOMEWORK
Shapes writing worksheet

What are we learning about?
Literacy:
Compare & Contrast Fairy Tales
Importance of Settings
Story Creation

Phonics:
Letter Ww
Distinguishing Sounds
Rhyming

Math:
Comparing Numbers to 20

Sight Words:
there
then
they

Tomorrow is our March Birthday Celebration & Egg Hunt. If you have not sent 12 candy filled eggs, please do so by tomorrow morning! Your child will also need to bring a bag or a basket to collect eggs in. We will celebrate our birthdays first and then hunt eggs.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We had such a fun day!!! Let me recap what the rest of our week was like.

We read The Luckiest St. Patrick's Day Ever

Discussed the beginning, middle, and ending of the book:

Then the kiddos created a story map of the book:

We also read The Luckiest Leprechaun

And The Night Before St. Patrick's Day

Then we discussed who was worth more than gold:

"My teacher is worth more than gold and my Daisy."

"My friends and my baby duck."

We also discussed what we would do if we found a pot of gold:

And they wrote about it:

"If I had a pot of gold, I would give it back to the leprechaun and say Happy St. Patrick's Day.

"If I had a pot of gold, I would get a farm and have animals like bulls and horses and cows."

"If I had a pot of gold, I would make a trap out of metal." The leprechaun is saying "Who put me in jail?"

My students graphed Lucky Charms:

We started a new 3D shapes chart:

We did some fun spring math activities:

These are the little treats I gave the kiddos for St. Patrick's Day:

And......The leprechaun visited our room and made a huge mess!! The kids couldn't wait to clean up all the glitter and foot prints!

He even left us a little note:

At least the leprechaun left us chocolate!!

We ended our week with a long recess and popcorn party!!

Math, Centers, and Continents

Last week and this week have both been review weeks for us. We have reviewed adding and subtracting as well as 3d and 2d shapes.

This week we have worked on blending sounds to form words. Below you will see one way we have practiced this. The students had no idea what letter was on their head. The class had to blend the sounds together and tell these three what word they formed. These students then had to figure out what letter they were.

The students have been editing sentences:

Last week we talked about Asia. We read Lon Po Po (the Chinese version of Little Red Riding Hood) and Little Red Riding Hood:

Then we used our Text to Text Connections chart and compared the two books:

This week we are talking about Europe. We read The Story of Ferdinand

We labeled different nouns and verbs throughout the book:

Today we read One Fine Day

I stopped reading the book towards the end and the students had to predict what the ending would be. They drew pictures, shared their endings with the class, and we attached them to our Good Readers Make Mental Images chart. Then we finished the book to see what students predicted the correct ending.

Here are some new centers for this week:

Our new writing center:

We have been talking about vowels a lot lately:

One of our new centers is a vowel picture sort:

Noun/Verb Sort:

Skip counting by 2's:

Addition:

Blends sort:

Don't forget Spring Break is next week!!!

March 8th Newsletter

Announcements
IMPORTANT DATES

Friday, March 9th – End of the 3rd 9 Weeks
Monday, March 12th- Spring Portraits
Monday, March 19th-Friday, March 23rd – Spring Break
Tues., March 28th & Wed., March 29th – Parent/Teacher Conferences
Friday, March 30th – March Birthday Celebration

What are we learning about?
Literacy:
Compare & Contrast Fairy Tales
Importance of Setting Story Creation

Phonics:
Letter Gg
Distinguishing Sounds
Rhyming

Math:
3D & 2D Shapes

Sight Words:
come
here

HOMEWORK
Editing
Subtraction & Addition
Due Monday, March 12th

A much needed update!

Parents, I am so sorry I haven't posted in like three weeks!! We have been doing so much and I have been preparing for my Praxis III (to get my final license). My assessor came on Tuesday and it went really well! The kiddos did great!!

A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated President's Day. Here are some charts we created for Abraham Lincoln and George Washington:

Last week we read several different Froggy books. We discussed the different adventures Froggy went on and then my students had to write an opinion piece about their favorite Froggy book.

In math, we have been composing and decomposing numbers.

We talked about different ways to figure out math problems: number sentence, pictures, number line, and 100's chart

We even created a big book:

I have 3 hearts and 2 swings. I have 5 in all.

I have 2 peace signs and 3 hearts. I have 5 in all.

And lastly we have been working on capitalizing when we write sentences!

SORRY FOR THE OBVIOUS GRAMMATICAL ERRORS!! A new chart is in the process of being made!

I am hoping to give a better update about this week later!!

Thanks for all you do!