What's your favorite story?!

Do we have a monster under these beds?!

Our reading response to a fun story!

Dare to take a peek?!

 Everyone loves a read aloud, especially when we can make connections to the story. One favorite was There's A Monster Under My Bed. The boy in the story had an active imagination and was certain there were monsters under the bed only to discover that it was his own little brother!
We also introduced a few series such as the Laura Numeroff books which all follow a similar plot pattern. We read If You Take A Mouse to School and followed up with our own version of bringing a mouse somewhere. 
                                                                        
   


 While learning about characters in books, we laughed along with Fred and Ted in Fred and Ted Like to Fly. Introducing our alphabet themed books was perfect for reading The Alphabet Mystery.We followed this up by taking a look at our dictionaries and choosing a page to illustrate and to record a few words. 

Ted and Fred books

If you take a mouse....

Exploring the dictionary

Of course we enjoyed reading with friends too - so many comfy chairs and reading spots!

Reading buddies

Books are better with friends

Look what we found

Reading and counting wolves!

During phonics we have been introducing short vowels, making and sounding out words, and we took out our magnetic letter boards on Friday to make words letter by letter.

Setting up the letter board

Let's make a word!

Feed the Monster rhyming fun

Learning about using labels to name parts of a picture has been a focus in writing. The kids love to draw, so labeling their drawings using lower case letters has been lots of creative fun.

All kinds of drawing ideas

Adding the finishing touches

Using our illustration How to Draw books

Ta Da!

Proud of our work

volcanoes, houses, animals... all labeled

Great Cuisenaire rod order!

Elaborate!

Dot picture fun when done!

Lots of hands on exploring has accompanied math time. We are using ten frames to find as many combinations of ten as we can, we are working with number equations, and we are engaging in Math Talks to explain our thinking and counting strategies with the class.

Demonstrations

Recording a math sentence

Great teamwork has been observed with exploration of pattern blocks, solid blocks, and filling a ten frame with items as we count and then count with dot markers.

Great collaboration

Pattern block design

Counting and filling ten frames

Have you heard about our Peaceful Place? It's a spot in our room to relax, play with an assortment of fidget toys, and have a few quiet minutes to ourselves.

It's cozy in here!

I like these squishy things!

I love llama!

Science has been full of exploration with sound. Learning about vibrations, sound waves, and varying volumes has been part of our follow up activities. We viewed a Mystery Science episode learning how cartoon creators make sound effects, we drew a lift the flap book of things that make sound (those will go home next week), and we read about times when sounds are used to send a message. I loved their examples of sound producing things that they drew - good sounds like an ice cream truck, loud sounds like a lawn mower, and annoying sounds like a dad snoring!!

One of our sound texts

We have new chrome books in our class and will soon be using them for math centers and language art centers - had to get an early start in checking them out though!

I love this!

Sentence order game

I made this!

I am proud of all the effort the kids have been showing. They are fully engaged with all our activities and everyone is joining in with new friends and cooperating and sharing! Here a few last writing pictures which show efforts in using lower case letters, spaces, capitals, and end marks.

I got this!

We used our best printing!

My best work!

 The birthdays keep coming! We wished a happy birthday to Isaac, James, and our other James, as well as to Nate whose birthday is this weekend! We've sung our tooth song to a couple of friends who lost teeth this week too - Cherylynn and Nataly!

Are we ready for a full week of school next week? I think so, but we all have to get to bed early - lots of energy needed!! Have a wonderful weekend,
Mrs. Dagley