Sailing, Sailing, Sailing Across the Sea

Painting a scene of Columbus' voyage

  We learned about Christopher Columbus, the famous explorer who sailed the 'Great Western Sea' to attempt a new way to the Indies but who, in the process discovered a whole new land instead. He set off an age of exploration to the Americas and braved the huge ocean on his journeys. The kids had fun singing a poem about him, water painting the voyage, and learning about the perils of travel through the books we read and the maps we explored. 

Love being artistic!

Painting is always relaxing!

Lots of concentration

Just a little green for the land

Our Columbus poem

We continued to explore shapes

Finishing touches

in our geometry math unit this week. We practiced dividing shapes into quarters, we arranged quarters of shapes into designs, made pictures with pattern blocks, and played Any Way You Slice It, which involved making hexagons from a variety of other shapes. Composing and decomposing shapes has been very hands-on. We also took a look at analog clocks, how they could be divided in half for a half hour, and what the short and long hands of a clock represent. 

Pattern block designs

Designs with quarters of squares

Any Way You Slice It

Let's make a picture

My design!

5 In A Row adding

Wait 'til you see mine!

Solving a story problem

Math notebook recordings

Lights, camera, action! Everyone has now performed our Jump In skit! The kids improved their reading fluency and expression as they practiced for it, and then all had their important moment when they performed! 

We are ready!

We rocked it!

Performers!

Show time!

We're ready!

We're up!

 During phonics this week we introduced the digraphs /sh/, /ch/, and /th/. Reading The H Brothers was a fun way to introduce them. 

Our digraph book

PALS phonics

Making words

Finding sight words in poems

 Fall is here, pumpkins are everywhere, and we had fun making our own. We've also had lots of friends bring in signs of fall after recess- colorful leaves being a favorite. Our prize box has a few fall themed prizes, and our library area is now displaying fall themed books as well as animals from the woods around us. 

Football season!

Woodland animals

A favorite- wolves!

Cutting a pumpkin

Adding a pumpkin face

Leaves from recess

Vampire prize!

Ready to display my pumpkin!

 We wished a Happy Birthday to Jayden this week and sang the tooth song to Cori and Ivy. It was great seeing you at Open House. Your kids loved showing off their favorites in the room! They are very proud of their hallway display in the hall as well! 

Have a nice long weekend,
Mrs. Dagely

We are all mathematicians!

Learning about halves of a shape

We began the geometry unit in math with a fun partner activity. One partner cut the shape (a pretend brownie) in half, but the other partner got to pick which half they wanted! We quickly learned what halves and not halves looked like! We also experimented with ways to cut a shape in half - horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. We have sorted shapes by their attributes, have learned to describe them with words such as vertices/corners, straight or curved sides, and closed or open. 

Sorting and recording in our math notebooks

Let's talk about this attribute!

Sorting shapes partners

Triangle, not triangles sort

 Our math stations gave us another way to practice working with shapes, as well as to review all the ways to make 8 and 10 with manipulatives and equations. 

Using elastics and geoboards

Recording my shape on geopaper

What shape can you make?

Cubes to make combinations of 10

Lemon and orange trees for ways to make 8

Playing a shape matching game

Ways to make 10

Lots of attention has been focused on phonics lately. We are using letter sounds to segment and blend new words, to isolate each letter sound in words we want to spell, and to differentiate sounds of short vowels. Our literacy centers are a great way to practice using these skills as is our morning meeting times of singing sight words and vowel posters. 

Making words with magnetic letters

Being the 'teacher' spelling words!

Leading us for short U song

Reading sentences to match the pictures

Unscrambling words letter by letter

Helping with a vowel song

Using ice cream cones to make and sound out words

Short E song

Listening to visiting readers who were once first graders in this room is always inspiring for the younger ones. 

Thanks for reading to us!

Hooray! Our first actors performed the story/play called Jump In. They read their parts beautifully and loved performing. Each part is leveled differently so all can participate, and the practice times allow for repeated readings which helps in fluency and expression. More to come next week. 

Buddy reading and reading parts of stories to the class remains popular.

I found a good book!

I will read to you!

Our Read-Alouds are always engaging and sometimes very funny. We laughed along with Little Owl as he insisted he was not scared to be out at night, we cheered for Owl in cock-a-doodle-hoooo when his true value was discovered, and we were captivated listening to a short chapter book called, Three By The Sea.  

Ending the day with Puzzlemania on Friday involved a good deal of team work. Some will take a few days to complete but here are a few completed ones. 

50 states!

Nice work, guys!

 Sofia did lose that tooth, and Scarlett lost one as well - our tooth song is being regularly sung! 
Next week, we will have the Open House (although due to traffic volume and construction delays, the Ice Cream Social part has been removed from the evening). Check the TES emails for more information. 

Our first month is behind us with lots more fun to come! Have a wonderful weekend,
Mrs. Dagley