Who can make a shadow?

Pop up shadow animals

We had some fun in science with shadows despite the rainy week. As we experimented with blocking light in order to cast a shadow, the kids fulfilled that universal urge to put their hands in front of the overhead projector light, only this time with animal shadow puppets! They also saw that as they moved their puppet closer to the source of light, their shadow got bigger and less defined. The next step was making a pop-up picture of an animal blocking sunlight and casting its black construction paper shadow. I'm hoping for some sun next week so we can cast our own shadows when blocking sunlight outside.

Look! A shadow!

Shadows on the beach

Casting shadows

Let's make our puppet shadows move

What happens if we move closer to the light?

 Listening to an online Mystery Science read-aloud, Light Up the Dark, helped us learn that in the absence of light, as in a cave, we cannot see anything. Next week we will use our Dark Box to experiment with trying to see a picture in total darkness and then with allowing degrees of light in.

Math games and activities have focused on using doubles facts to solve facts that are near a double (doubles plus one). Recognizing that 4+5 is near the double of 4+4 allows us to use the doubles fact and then add one more to solve 4+5. We then added 0,1, or 2 to a doubles fact. Finally we identified equations and dot representations that are equal and learned that the equal sign can be appropriate in different positions within a math expression such as: 6+1 = 4+3 = *******. Check out the photo:

Rows of equal sums

Math partners doubles work

 A book series we introduced this week features Max the duck. We identified character features after reading Duck at the Door. 

We also learned about bats, echolocation, diet, and nocturnal habits. Several friends shared bat facts with us after reading independently about them.

Thanks for reading to us

Great photo of a Flying Fox bat

 Centers this week offered an opportunity to spell color words as they searched for colored spider pictures throughout the room. Sorting and making words at the pocket chart, and reading a story on Starfall.com were other activities. We also have a roomful of word detectives who are finding our targeted sight words in books that they are reading, and finding words within words!

Making words with word families

Pocket chart sorting 

Spider search color words

Starfall reading

Cheering cues for spelling o-n-e!

Learning and practicing our 5 new sight words per week often involves a song to help us remember them, but for spelling 'ONE' we perform a cheer instead!

Lots of mystery kids appeared this week when many arrived in full costume! What excitement to greet each other in disguise!

Fun!

Captures the class energy level that day!

Captain America!

So exciting!

Happy Day!

Celtics and Swat team

All decked out!

Spiderman, Woody, and Buzz

The Book Fair visit was a success. It continues to be open through next Thursday. 

We sang Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay three times this week for lost teeth - Sofia, Jayden, and Evan! 

Next week there is no school on Wednesday - a professional development day for teachers. 

So happy to see the sun again, and the wind certainly did its part in adding to leaf piles to jump in!

                                                         Have a nice weekend,
                                                         Mrs. Dagley