We have had so many learning adventures! We have read about forest animals, counted money, and learned about Thanksgiving. We have had math stations, ActivBoard lessons, and even an edible turkey and Harvest Blessing!
I love being with my terrific students and their great parents!!! Thank you for sharing with me your precious children! Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!
We have been having so much fun learning at school that I have been going home exhausted! That’s why I am a bit behind on our posts.
We have continued to read words with long vowels. We have visited Starfall.com for additional review. Perhaps you can visit Starfall.com with your child to play fun phonics games!
In grammar we have continued to learn about nouns. We have learned about special titles, such as Mr., Dr., Mrs., and Officer. We have also learned to capitalize days of the week, months, of the year, and holidays. You can see one of our activities to reinforce this skill in the pictures below. This was a quick check to make sure that the students were grasping the concept, and they did great.
We have read about dinosaurs. We discussed carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. Hannah told us that, “Omnivores are animals who eat meat and plants, like humans do.” I also read aloud to the class Dinosaurs before Dark, the first Magic Treehouse book. These are great chapter books for first through third graders. The class even took an AR Quiz on the book!
We also read about forest life. We learned that bears eat grubs, and woodpeckers peck holes in trees to try to find bugs to eat.
We loved learning about our bodies during our unit of study. We made q-tip skeletons to represent our bones. We also made My Body, My Buddy. We used everyday items to represent some of our body parts: an absorbent sponge for our brains, a heart, bubble wrap for our air-filled lungs, a scratchy sponge for our liver, a balloon for our expandable stomach, yarn for our winding intestines, sandpaper for our filtering kidneys, and a fishbowl for our bladder. We know many new facts about our bodies, including ways to take care of ourselves.
In phonics we are beginning to learn about long vowels. This week we learned about long a with sneaky e (as in lake). We watched a video on Starfall.com about sneaky e and we played a long a game on the website. We also visited SpellingCity.com to review our long a spelling words. Our class loves technology, and we especially love our ActivBoard!!! J
We read an amusing story: The Farmer in the Hat. That cat sure did make for an interesting farmer! We discussed cause and effect and the characteristics of a play, such as rehearsals, lines, and roles.
In math we continued working with addition and subtraction. We can add ten to a number by using the number chart. We can count forwards and backwards by tens and forwards by fives. We are also beginning to count by even numbers. We are ready to begin counting money next week! It’s going to be a blast!!!
During our unit time, we had a lot of Spooky Fun. We read many spooky books. We completed Dem Bones math, and we made Haunted Hands. Some students brought in extra treats on Friday afternoon, and all of our students left school EXCITED about Halloween! I hope you had a great Halloween. We sure did! Check our family blog for pictures of Kennedy and Case in their costumes.
This week we learned all about digraphs th (as in thick) and sh (as in ship). We also studied the –all family.
At the Following Directions Center we had fun making fish for Max to enjoy. At the Vocabulary Center we used magnets to spell our story words. We solved Firehouse Rhymes at the Word Work Center, and we listened to good stories at the Listening Center.
We enjoyed music, art, and computer classes! These are wonderful additions to our classroom creative time.
All week long we learned about fire safety. We watched a fire safety video, learned and practiced the stop, drop, and roll method, made firefighters, and wrote about fire safety. Now we’re fire prepared. We even made edible firetrucks! A big thank you goes to the parents who donated items for the firetrucks and/or those parents who came to the classroom to help make the firetrucks!
We returned to school after fall break very revived and ready for review and new learning!
We did not have a new reading story, so instead, we devoted our reading time to a study of nocturnal animals. We learned all about opossums, owls, bats, and raccoons. We read nonfiction and fiction books about these animals. We loved watching the Stellaluna DVD, as well as listening to Mrs. Clark read about Epossomundas! That is one silly opossum. At the end of the week we numbered off, met in groups numbered 1-4, and wrote facts about our assigned animal. We also had some fun art projects!
In math we honed our addition and subtraction skills, having fun with fact families! In a few weeks we will begin counting money, so it’s very important that we can add and subtract well first! Please continue to help your child with number recognition and counting by 10s and 5s.
In science we completed our weather study. We read about and watched short videos about earthquakes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and the water cycle. We had a lot of fun!
We also took a walking field trip to the fire station. The firefighters taught us about fire safety. If our clothes catch on fire, we should stop, drop, and roll. If our house is filled with smoke we should fall and crawl. We took a tour of the inside of the fire station and got to sit in the fire truck. What an exciting day we had! Next week we will learn more about fire safety.
What a week! Miss Brawley finished her solo teaching, so once again she and Mrs. Clark shared teaching responsibilities. It was so nice to get back to my sweet children (and finish conferences)!
This week we took a safari as we read Animal Park. The students LOVED reading about the safari animals. They learned new facts about lions, zebras, hippos, and elephants! We made a koala at our Following Direction Center. Those koalas are too cute! Our boys and girls are really improving their tracing and cutting skills!
We finished our short vowel review, so your child should be able to instantly read words that contain short vowel sounds.
We also finished Unit 1 of Reading Street, but don’t throw away the spelling and story words lists. Keep them in a safe place and pull them out from time to time for review. Unit 2 words have already been updated on my website, so go ahead and be studying!
In math this week we sang the Doubles Rap and learned about fact families. The numbers 3, 8, and 5 are a fact family because you can use those three numbers to make four number sentences: 3+5=8; 5+3=8; 8-3=5; and 8-5=3. We have a really fun way to write fact families, in which we begin with skeleton number sentences!!! Our minds and hands are always so busy during math!!!
Well, it’s fall break! Enjoy the rest and be ready for some new learning next week!
