Tally Marks Anyone?

The human Tally Marks!

Don't drop me!

Bursts of laughter accompanied our math this week as we learned how to tally and practiced a way to remember that the fifth tally mark is horizontal! We have a poem to help act it out: 5 stick friends were walking, they were walking straight and tall, then suddenly the fifth one tripped and he/she began to fall! Luckily his friends caught him . His feet did not touch the ground. So from now on when you tally, make the fifth one lying down! Now when we are organizing data into graphs, we take the extra step of making tally marks as well. 

Our tally mark stick friends!

 Who says we can only use paper and pencil to graph and tally? This week the kids made a Lego creation of their choice and then tallied and graphed the number of colors they used. 

Math is fun!

Lego math fun!

 Our Fairy Tale reading genre has continued to create enthusiasm. Everyone loved reading Young Arthur and we all cheered as he pulled the sword from the stone. Of course we made our own 'sword in the stone' afterwards with hardening clay and a mini plastic sword. The sword will be stuck fast in the clay as it hardens this weekend and then can go home. We also read Puss In Boots, Beauty and the Beast, and Robin Hood. The exposure to the rich vocabulary in these longer read-alouds has certainly made the stories come to life.

Favorite stories we've read

The illustrations are equally impressive

Folk tales have also been read aloud such as, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and The Three Little Pigs, and they all have animals as their main characters. 
Everyone loved getting the 'mail' when we learned about the Pony Express, so we now have a knight and queen of the day who race off on a horse or unicorn to get a fairy tale letter by a mystery character. It's fun to read the letters and guess which famous fairy tale character wrote it! 

I fear no dragons on the way!

Race for the letter!

Will a dragon await us?!

We are off for the letter!

Very colorful knights!

Never fear - the letter will be here!

Our new writing genre is Poetry. We will learn that the structure of poetry is very different from prose. Poetry has line breaks, phrases, can sometimes rhyme, and uses descriptive imagery to convey feeling.
This week we began with a shape poem to give everyone the chance to practice using their 5 senses to describe their shape of choice.

Shape poems!

One of our language arts centers included using the dictionaries. We went for hunt to find and record words with /ea/ or /ee/. 
The water paints came out again too, this time to paint and label a castle! Indoor recess saw team work on floor puzzles - here is a horse one. 

Phonics Dictionary Hunt!

Ta Da!

Let the painting begin!

What colors are your castle?

Ready to label the parts of a castle?

Thanks to those who have been sending in tissue boxes for our castle project. We will plan that soon. 






We wished Liam a Happy Birthday this week - another cheerful birthday boy! 

Looking ahead to Field Day in June, our class T-shirt color will be YELLOW. I have purchased a couple extra in case someone doesn't have that color. You can find T-shirts at Michael's for $3.99 if you are on the lookout early. 

Could we ask for a more perfect day today? Make the most of it and enjoy all the new blooming everywhere!
Mrs. Dagley