It's beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

Last week we read Mrs. McNosh Hangs up Her Wash. It is such a cute book! We then discussed Who, What, Where, and When

We also discussed community helpers and started our Community Helpers A to Z chart

As we read Mrs. McNosh, the students had to listen for something she hung up and then write it and draw a picture of it on a sticky note. They did a great job at listening!

We read several different gingerbread books last week and the students had to pick which was their favorite. They also wrote about their favorite gingerbread book

Some of my students and their awesome writing!

My students had to disguise a gingerbread man for homework and at school they wrote a story about it:

"My gingerbread is a queen. Her name is See See. She likes Mexican food. She likes to dress up in pink clothes."

"My gingerbread man is a robot. My gingerbread man's name is Toby. My gingerbread man jumps on the trampoline."

"My gingerbread man is a girl princess. My gingerbread's name is Bella. It likes to eat bananas."

"My gingerbread man is a dino. And his second name is Samson. His home is in North America."
This week we have been talking a lot about Christmas. We had a good discussion about our wants and needs.

The kids have been learning how to measure things this week in Math. This cutie learned how to measure how tall he was in presents:

They also used cubes to measure a present:

We have been counting down the days until Christmas break:

This is our new behavior system for the different tables. I give them a marshmallow for good behavior and when they get 15 marshmallows, they get hot chocolate!

We are decorating our Christmas tree!

And the gingerbread man made a visit and rewarded those with good behavior!

Continents and Easter

We started our week off discussing North America and South America. We read Arrow to the Sun:

We used our new Follow the Yellow Bick Road chart to retell the story:

Then, the kiddos painted their own Aztec pictures:

The kiddos also learned the fancy word for opposites, antonyms.

We read The Foot Book:

And then did a fun activity (that I found on Pinterest) to go along with the book:

We also read The Big Bunny and the Easter Eggs and discussed antonyms using this book:

The kids wrote about what the Easter Bunny would do if he slept in! Their writing was very creative!

In math this week, we reviewed comparing numbers

I added two Easter centers for this week:

And last, the kids had the opportunity to skype with Mr. Marc from Adventures to fitness! This was very exciting!

Update from Last Week!

Last week, we created a chart about what we would do if we were the Easter Bunny and then the kiddos created a bunny and wrote about it!

"I would give candy to boys and girls."

"I would give my basket to the baby bird."

"I would give the girls and boys a big basket with candy and toys."

I added this Easter egg to our writing center. The students have to write about one of the pictures on the egg.

"Me and my family hide eggs at my Aunt Paige's. We open the eggs."

"I hope the Easter bunny comes to the Easter egg hunt."

The weather was so nice last week we decided to go outside and use sidewalk chalk to do math instead of using our math journals!

The students used shape manuplatives to practice sliding, fliping, and rotating shapes.

I found this on Pinterest! We are going to use this chart to retell stories this week!!

Parents, thank you so much for all of your help at the Easter Egg hunt!!!

This Weeks Update

We had a great week!! It was good to see all of the kiddos after our long break! Here is an update from last week:

We read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

We talked about what questions we had before, during, and after reading the book {thank you Pinterest for this idea!} This was great because the students were able to answer each others questions.

We discussed who, what, where and when questions

And then created a venn diagram to compare ourselves to the little boy in the book

We also read Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems. This is such an adorable book! The kids LOVED it!

We then created an anchor chart to retell the story {this is something great you can do at home when reading with your kids!}

I also introduced nouns and verbs this week. We used these cute boy and girl charts to help us! {Again, thank you Pinterest!} We read The Jacket I Wear in the Snow and then wrote all of the nouns from the book on our Nick Noun chart.

Here are our centers from last week and for the next week:

Students use the lights to count syllables and then they place that number of cubes or cotton balls to show how many syllables the word has:

At this center, the students are to sort the fish cards by beginning and ending sounds: -ch, -sh, or -th.

They do the same in this center:

They loved our Write the Room center this week! They have to complete a scavenger hunt and find cards that look like the one below. They are to count the number of snowflakes and then write the number word on the correct blank.

At this center, the students have to pick a card write the correct color word and then draw the picture.

And our last center is our read aloud center. The students had to match the color word with the correct snowman.

I worked this weekend to get my reading groups and my guided reading table organized! I am now ready to start our reading groups this week! Your children will be bringing books home this week. Be sure to read the books with them {rather let them read the books to you.} You can discuss what happened in the book, what their favorite part was, practice retelling the story, and you can have them draw a picture of their favorite part. These are just suggestions, not things your have to do!

Center ideas are from the following websites:

http://www.pre-kpages.com/blog/

http://candokinders.blogspot.com/

http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com/