Wednesday, November 29, 2017

What a great day at Osprey Point!  The weather was beautiful!  The kids had a great time making their pine cone bird feeders!  Thank you so much to Canon's mom, Emma's mom, Joah's grandma, and Mrs. Gordon for helping us out!


Making the bird feeders








Playing Farmer in the Dell - Waiting to go on our hike




Hanging up our bird feeders on our hike







The Council Circle - Where we stopped to see, hear, smell, and feel nature






A beautiful day for a walk in the woods!




This has been a super busy week!  Wednesday we spent the morning at Osprey Point.  We have mass next Friday, December 8th.  We will be spending a lot of time at church practicing for our mass.  The Christmas concert is coming soon.  We are putting in a lot of practice time for the concert.  (***Reminder - The concert is next Tuesday.  The students need to be at school by 5:25.  Please see the email with all the info from Mrs. Warpinski.***)

***Next week we are going to the Christmas program at NDA.  We are missing a few permission slips.  Please remember to sign and return.  Thank you!

Another big project we have been working on is our STREAM project.  Our first job is to build Noah's Ark.  We will meet with Mrs. Sabin's class again early next week to continue working on the ark. Thank you for donating so many recyclables.  They are being put to creative uses!















Sunday, November 19, 2017

Pajama / Movie day was a success!  Miss Mac came and joined us.  She brought a TON of movie choices.  The class voted - and the winning vote was for Meet the Robinson's.  The whole day was fantastic.  I am so proud of the kids for earning 400 Leader of the Pack cards!  Our next classroom goal is 500.  We haven't officially decided on the next class reward yet.  I'll keep you posted.  :)


Pajama Picture



Silly Pajama Picture



The day was dark and rainy.  When the students came back from recess I had this fire video up on the SMART Board.  We kept the lights off and ate our snack by the fire light.  The sound was on and you could even hear the fire crackling.  It was so cool.  This picture doesn't give the ambiance.  After snack, Aaron laid down in front of the fire with a good book.  



Working on centers in pajamas - 
Making words out of the letters in Thanksgiving


Working on a Thanksgiving word search


Read to someone


Brady was working so hard on this.  It's a combination writing center - sticker story and hand art.




Morning Tubs creation


NDA Christmas Play - We are going to the NDA Christmas play on Thursday, December 7th.  The play is from 9:30 - 11:00.  We are able to bring 4 chaperones - but you would have to drive yourself - there won't be room on the bus.  If you would like to join us, please let me know.

Osprey Point - We are scheduled to go to Osprey Point again on Wednesday, November 29th.  We will need a chaperone to come with us.  Please let me know if you would be able to join us.  Thank you!

Canned Food Drive - Reminder to bring in cans of food.  We will bring them up during Mass on Wednesday at Res.

Wednesday - All students are to be dropped off and picked up at Res.  Please be at Res by 7:50.  Dismissal will be at 11:30.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!







Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Phonics - This week we learned two more glued sounds.  We now have all, am, and an.  We made some cute "houses" this week.  They were the -am house and the -an house.  We wrote down words that could live in each house.  (jam, ham, Sam, ran, fan, man, etc.)  There were some close words - we had them live in tricky neighbor houses.  The kids loved it!  :)

Reading - Each day we continue to meet in our reading groups and work in our daily 5 centers.  This time has become absolutely amazing to watch and see the growth!  The students are working in Thanksgiving themed centers this week.  One choice is to make words out of the letters in Thanksgiving!  This has become a favorite!  Samuel came up with 45 word today out of the letters!


Another favorite is putting the words of a Thanksgiving poem / story in the correct order.  The words are written on the cover of the brown envelope.  All of the words are written on note cards.  The students need to put all the words in the correct order.





Guadalupe had to match the words on the feathers to the correct word family.


Johanna was using  this Thanksgiving poem to figure out which words were missing on her sheet.  Then she had to record the missing words.


Valeria was using wikki sticks to practice her spelling words.


Mason drew a picture out of this squiggle and wrote about it.  He made a snail.


Alex created a picture using hand art and wrote about it.  He made a jelly fish after reading a story about sea animals in his reading group.


Writing - This week in handwriting we are working on the letters Gg and Jj.  We are always focusing on forming the letters the correct way and putting them in the correct spaces.  In writing this week our writer's workshop story was about our favorite season.  We are working on starting with capital letters (and for some students - only using capital letters where they are needed), using punctuation, and using good spacing.  We continue to talk about adding more sentences and adding more details.  We also finished up our turkeys this week - and we have a few students that are working on their thankful turkeys.  Students are also creating hand art turkeys and writing things that they are thankful for.  



Math - Group 1 is working on adding numbers up to ten using counters and a number line.  They are starting to work on subtracting up to 5.
Group 2 finished the chapter on story problems yesterday.  They learned how to look at the story problem and decide if it was adding or subtracting, and how to figure out which number was missing.  They are now starting a unit on working with groups of tens and ones.  Today we learned that adding 3 + 1 is similar to adding 30 + 10.  We made groups of ten up to 100.

Suzi was really excited about making this lion out of pattern blocks in math centers.  :)



Religion - We are finishing up our chapter about Baptism in our book.  Friday we will read out of our Promise Paper to learn about this week's Gospel.



We love when we get to start the day with morning tubs!





Canned Food Drive - The students are encouraged to bring in cans of food.  We have a basket outside of our classroom door.  We will bring our canned goods to the All School Mass next week Wednesday.








Monday, November 13, 2017

Weekly Spelling Lists -

Phonetic List - Bonus Letters and Glued Sounds (all, am, an)
wall
well
fall
fell
tall
tell
ham
fan
ram
pan

High-Frequency List - Trick Words - Words 41-50
which
their
said
if
do
will
each
about
how
up

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Phonics - This week we learned our first glued sound - all.  We learned how to tap out glued sounds by "gluing" our fingers together.  We worked on dictation this week.  We learned about quotation marks while talking about our new trick word - said.

Turkeys - This week we made these awesome turkeys that are now hanging from our ceiling.  They are so cute!  The body of the turkey is made by tracing your feet.  The feathers of the turkey are made by tracing your hands.  It's a lot of work - and such an adorable outcome!  It's my favorite project of the year!




Reading - Our word work center is all about Thanksgiving.  Some of the activities to choose from are cloze activities with Thanksgiving poems, putting Thanksgiving poems in order on note cards working on Thanksgiving word searches and activities, making words out of the letters in Thanksgiving, and putting Thanksgiving words in ABC order.  In word work, they students may also practice their spelling words.  They can practice with wikki sticks, magnetic letters, letter stamps, play-doh, or by rainbow writing their words.
One of the writing centers is making thankful turkeys.  The students are writing things they are thankful for on turkey feathers and then making a turkey out of the feathers.
We use centers - our daily 5 time - so that we can have reading groups.  While the students are in a reading group, the other students are working in one of the daily 5 centers.



Math - Group 1 has been using counters to add equations.  They have  been working on tiny tumblers with their math mountains.
Group 2 is working on story problems.  They are reading the problems and deciding if they addition or subtraction.  They have to figure out where the missing number is - it may be a partner or a total.

When the students are not in group, they are working in centers.  Here's Valeria working on this center.  The spider body has a number.  Then you need to find eight equations (the legs) that equal that number.




Science - This week we learned about clouds.  We learned three types - stratus, cirrus, and cumulus.  We are coming to the end of the weather unit.  We'll have a short test next week.  Then we'll start working out of our social studies book.

Writing - This week we are working on turkey stories.  The book is the shape of a turkey!  The first page is the cover page.  The second page has a cloze activity (fill in the blank) about a turkey.  The third page is a blank story - ready to be written by a first grader!  The students were told they needed to have at least three sentences.  They needed to start the story with a capital letter, use good spacing, and end with punctuation.  I am blown away at the stories that are being written!





Religion - The title of this week's chapter is God shares his life with us.  We have been learning about the sacrament of Baptism in this chapter.

And as always - a few pictures of morning tubs -