Please Be Mine, Valentine!

Lacy home-made Valentines!

What could be better than huge Valentines made with lace doilies and love? The kids had such a great time choosing colors and layering the heart doilies to give to their special moms and grandmas! 

She will love it!

Made with love!

So fancy!

Special delivery!

Giving Valentines is loads of fun, but delivering them and then opening ones given to us, is frosting on the cake! What delight as each child waded through the pile of valentines from their friends!

Now who is this one from?

Look what I got!

Love this one!

So many Valentines!

Valentine smiles!

 Our collection of Procedural (How-To) writing was sent home this week. We had fun learning the Friendly Letter format of writing this past week and will put it to good use as we launch our Persuasive Writing unit. Get ready for some requests, supported by powerful  reasons. We tried out our first persuasive letter on Friday - spoiler alert: sleepovers, movies, restaurants, play dates, and family outings have all been persuasively requested!

As we finished up our How-To unit, we also finished up our presentations of the group How-To project:

How to build a Lego submarine!

How To buy and use an ipad

Our How-To writing is ready for reading at home!

Social Studies this week focused on two of our greatest presidents in honor of President's Day - President Lincoln and President Washington. The kids really love non-fiction and true events about important people. They learned about the childhoods of both presidents and the events that shaped their presidency. We also had a chance to impress ourselves by learning to draw the White House, one of our national symbols.

Off to the White House!

White House artists!

One fun coincidence was that because of school store on Friday, kids came in waving their dollars and showing President Lincoln or President Washington's face on the bills!

Phonics and spelling rules are becoming a bit more challenging as we are introducing more spelling patterns, such as words with /oo/, /ay/, /ai/, etc. It can be helpful to write the weekly words on papers that are then sorted under the corresponding spelling pattern. Here is an ABC word work center:

Making silent e words

Topic 9 has been completed in math and we will move on to adding two digit numbers in Topic 10. Counting by tens from any number on the 100 chart and skip counting by 2s and 5s are important skills.

Our Penguin Info book!

Look what we learned!

Penguins everywhere!

I hope you had fun looking over your child's Penguin booklet. They worked very hard on assembling the booklet and writing the information they learned about penguin's habitat, diet, predators, and features. The background knowledge of animals we have studied around the globe will benefit us as we learn about animals and their structures and how they use body parts to survive in science.

I wish everyone a restful, healthy, and fun vacation week!

Mrs. Dagley

100 Day!

Despite the school delays and early releases due to snow, we still made it to Day100! Friday was our 100th day of school - we are 100 days smarter! We read stories about 100 Day, did 100 exercises (phew!), and sang 100 word wall words. We also made hats and colored a fake 100 dollar bill. 

We have wrapped up our procedural writing genre (How-Tos) and will be sending them home on Monday. Sharing the group project kids worked on was a fun way to bring the unit to a close. Most were presented this week, and the final ones will be presented Monday, due to some absent kids from a couple of the groups.

How To Play School

How To Paint Nails

How To Build A Box Fort Police Station

How To Make A Paper Airplane

Our next genre of writing is letter writing. We have learned the organization of a letter format: Heading (date), Greeting (Dear so and so), Body (what we want to tell), Closing (From, Love...), and Signature (name). Of course we have a song to help us remember, set to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.

We have written a couple of letters so far that went home to be delivered. We will continue next week and then use this format to introduce Persuasive Writing.

One of the texts we read aloud this week, Dear Tooth Fairy, was a fun way to introduce the letter genre, because Emily wrote a daily letter to the Tooth Fairy in this very funny book. Another text that had everyone on the edge of their seats was The Magic Hockey Skates. The Penguin That Hated the Cold was a funny book that launched or penguin focus.

Our globes with a lift up flap showing where penguins live

Non fiction texts we read that supported our focus on penguins were The Emperor's Egg, Without You, and Antarctica. The kids can tell you all about the dangers to penguins, the sizes and diet of penguins, and can explain how the Emperor penguins huddle together on the darkest, coldest days and nights and shuffle to keep everyone warm, all while holding an egg on their feet! We will continue with some penguin activities next week.

Bring out the bear claw! Spelling words with an ___aw spelling pattern can be tricky, but a bear claw filled with rhyming words for /aw/ makes it fun. 

Time to spell paw, claw, saw...!

In science we have been differentiating between living things and non living things. We can describe a living thing as needing food, water, and air to breathe, and as something able that changes, grows, moves, and has young.

Our poster chart

Math has found us all over the 100 chart counting by 1s and 10s, and finding one more and less than a given number, and ten more and less than a given number.

We have introduced the symbols for greater than and less than ( <  >), and due to the snow schedule changes, the homework included a page on this before we actually introduced it! Thank you for being the one to introduce it at home! Brings you right back to early school days doesn't it?! Everyone has seemed to catch on quickly.

We wished a Happy Birthday to Alyssa on Monday - the only February birthday in our class.

Next week is Valentine's Day (Wednesday) - the kids can send cards in any time ( a few ambitious friends already have!) and drop them in the Valentine's bags hanging up. We also have our last PTO school store on Friday. I'll send a reminder note home on Thursday. 

Have a wonderful weekend,              

Our Snowy Owl writing and project

Goodbye to the arctic!

Mrs. Dagley

Do you know the capital of Alaska?

Arctic writing!

Since we are learning about the Arctic habitat and wild life, it made sense to learn a little about one of our own states that is partly within the arctic circle - Alaska! We learned about that state's symbols, and flag, and we read about a very important and famous dog in Alaska named Balto. Back in 1925 Balto saved the town of Nome, Alaska as he led the dogsled team in the final relay to Nome, braving a blinding snowstorm and frozen river to carry life saving medicine for a diphtheria outbreak. Each part of the journey was covered by the national news at the time, and there is a statue of Balto in NYC!

We had some fun with a play on words when we asked, 'Juneau the capital of Alaska?'. It sounded like, "Do you know..." but the fun was that the name of the capital was within the question. It brought a few laughs and smiles!

We also completed our Race to the Pole booklet which explained the early days of exploration in the arctic and included a chance to write as an explorer, packing our supplies and describing an experience. Kids love pretending and donning  different roles when they play or write.

Making our Race to the Poles booklet

Here is one of our friends who just organized and set up all our arctic animals in the class library:

Look how I grouped all the creatures!

Next week we will head to the South Pole and learn about penguins!

Our science unit on plants and animals opened with learning how people have used nature as an inspiration for design. After comparing similarities between birds and planes, we diverged to learn about some famous Americans - the Wright Brothers, who invented the first airplanes. Later one of our friends discovered a picture of the Wright  

Look I found the Wright Brothers!

Brothers in one of our books.
Curiosity and student led discovery are exciting. Here is a trio that wanted to share cool USA things they found as well.

The USA map, White House, and Mt. Rushmore

Even recess was a place to express interest in learning as these friends assembled a floor puzzle of the USA. 

Team work!

Speaking of teamwork, our How- To writing genre provided the perfect chance to work together in discussing steps and sharing the writing in how to do an activity decided on. Besides the writing involved, it was a great chance for collaboration and compromise. The finished products will be shared and displayed next week, but here they are working on them.

We like working up here

Some excited planning here!

We've planned out or steps to write about!

We are ready to illustrate!

Finishing touches!

Sharing ideas and work is definitely a highlight, and after poetry each week, we always have kids eager to share their work.

Peter, Peter Penguin poem

We closed out the week with some groundhog fun by watching the Weather Channel's video of Phil the Groundhog. Not surprisingly with this freezing weather we have had, it will be 6 more weeks of winter...

In the meantime join in with our cheering Patriots fans:

Go Pats!

Valentine's Day will be here before you know it. We have decorated Valentine's bags and hung them up. As kids bring in Valentines, they can drop them in the bags during recess, and we will open them on Valentine's Day. (I have extra valentines if someone forgets...) I will be sending home a Valentine's class list on Monday. 

Ready to be filled!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs. Dagley