Players from the Green Bay Blizzard came to school.  They read us some of their favorite stories.  This weekend - Saturday - is the Father Allouez night at the Green Bay Blizzard game.

Phonics - This week we continue to work on vowel teams.  The long o vowel teams are oa - boat, oe - toe, and ow - snow.  Ow is tricky, because it also says ow - plow.  Today we were introduced to our newest vowel teams - ou and oo.  They each have two key word sounds also.  ou - soup and trout.  oo - book and school.

Math - The yellow group is working on adding numbers up to 10 by using the bigger number first and then counting on.  The green group is working on looking at a story problem and figuring out what the question is and where the missing number is.  The red group is making graphs and using data to figure out more / fewer, and other questions.  The blue group is working on telling time on an analog clock.  Each group goes through four rotations every day.  M- Meet with teacher, A-All by myself, T-Technology, H-Hands on.  I bought and made new centers over spring break.  They have been a hit this week!

Reading - We have six different reading groups - reading stories and learning things all at their reading levels!  In April and May we will have one more round of running records - testing reading levels.  Boy have they come a long way since September.  This week our word work focus is homophones - words that sound alike, but are spelled different and mean different thing.  (Ex.  hear, here)  The students have 6 different centers that they can choose from in word work.  The homophone centers have been pretty popular!

Matching homophone word puzzles

Matching homophone words on plastic eggs

The kids LOVE the work on writing center in Daily 5.  A current favorite is story cubes.  There are three cubes.  They have a who, a what, and a where on them.  The students roll them and come up with silly sentences.  They love it!

Brady made a book during work on writing.  Johanna used story cubes.  Look at all those words!

They love to share their writing work and word work after we clean up from daily 5 guided reading groups and centers!

Religion - We have our own Stations of the Cross books.  We have been reading through the 15 Stations and coloring our books.  This week we also learned about Jesus' twelve apostles.  Friday we will read out of our Promise Paper and learn about the Gospel for this weekend - Palm Sunday.

Social Studies - We are learning about the 50 states and their capitals.  Each day that we have social studies we learn three states and capitals in ABC order.  We have a puzzle map on the SMART Board that we fill in as we learn the state and capital.  We also have a book where we learn facts about each state.  So far we are up to 12 states - Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, and Idaho.  We are learning the song "Fifty Nifty".

Flat Stanley - We have had three Stanleys come back to us!  We have LOVED getting mail and reading about Stanley's adventures!  Where have the three Stanley's gone?

Green Bay, Wi.

Illinois

Minnesota

Lucy's grandma even made clothes for Stanley.  :)

*Please remember to return report card envelopes.

*Markers - Many of the markers are drying up.  Your student would love if you'd be able to get them some new markers.  :)

Weekly Spelling Lists -

Phonetic List - Vowel Teams - oa, oe, ow
goat
road
croak
foe
toe
flow
crow
now
how
cow

High Frequency List - Trick Words - Words 111-120
man
too
any
day
same
right
look
think
also
around

Today the kids wrote their Flat Stanley letters.  They wrote addresses on their envelopes.  It was a big project...and they tackled it!  The class is so excited to send out their letters and to let their Stanleys begin their journeys!

First we learned about addressing letters.  We learned where to write on the envelope.  We learned that street names, states, and capitals have capital letters.  We learned that there is a comma between the city and the state.  We learned about zip codes.  We learned what the return address is and where we put it on the envelope.

The next step was to address the envelopes and to write the letters to our recipients.

When the letters were finished we needed to fold them and put them into the envelope.  We also had to fold Stanley - we gave him a little hug and then put him in the envelope too.

Here is everyone's Stanley - before Stanley begins his journey.

Joah was on vacation last week.  We had to wait a little longer for his Stanley to get laminated.  :)

Here they are!  All addressed and ready to be mailed!  We can't wait to find out all of Stanley's adventures!

Flat Stanley - This weekend please think about where you would like to send Flat Stanley.  On Monday please send to school the person and address.  Please also send a stamped letter size envelope.  (It's important that the envelope is letter sized.  We will be sending a letter and a laminated Stanley in the envelope.  The students will also be writing addresses - and they tend to write bigger.)  I'd like to address the letters and get them sent off before spring break.  Thank you for your help on this awesome project!

Green Bay Blizzard - Green Bay Blizzard players will be coming to school on Monday.  They will be reading to our K-4 students.  They will sign autographs.  If your child has something they would like autographed they may bring it on Monday.

Dr. Seuss Day - Enjoy a few photos from our day -

Have a great weekend!