Week 17

Happy New Year and welcome back to school! I hope you had a fantastic holiday. Here is what happened in our classroom this week.

We reviewed the letters Yy and Dd. The students illustrated things that began with these letters.

Our close read for the week was The Snowy Day. 

Here are the vocabulary words from that story.

We did so many activities with this story. First we practiced retelling the story by sequencing pictures from the story.

We worked on the long o words that have the "ow" in them like in the word "snow".

We practiced inferences by using clues from the story to figure out why Peter's snowball was not in his pocket.

We worked on our opinion writing. We had to tell if we preferred sunny or snowy weather. I don't know about you, but I'm already tired of the cold weather.

It was great to go back to our Daily 5 centers and reading groups. 

In math, we worked on the numbers 9 and 10. We worked on the combinations of 9 and 10. We played shake and spill and practiced our combinations with that game.

In science, we learned the steps of the scientific method.

It was even more fun when we actually did science experiments and applied the scientific method to them. The first experiment was combining baking soda and conditioner to make snow. We had a lot of sensory fun mixing it and playing with it.

Another science experiment that we did was to predict what would happen if you added salt to a bottle of soda. We put salt inside a balloon and then wrapped the balloon over the lid of the soda bottle. We lifted the balloon and were very surprised at what happened.

The last science experiment that we did this week was predicting what would happen to a marshmallow when it was put into the microwave. We explored marshmallows with all 5 of our senses and wrote down descriptive words. Then we got to eat the marshmallow. 

Mrs. Langham saved one to put in the microwave. Here's what happened.

Week 16

This week was a whirlwind for me. My head is still spinning. We were so busy and had so much excitement. Here's a look at what we did in our classroom.

We read a few more gingerbread stories.

We worked on the letter Cc and also the letter Ee this week. The students were introduced to the sight words "you" and "what". We will be reviewing these in January.

Our close read was a nonfiction book called Reindeer. 

Here are the vocabulary words from that story.

We learned so much about reindeer that we worked on a nonfiction report about them.

We enjoyed drawing and painting reindeer pictures for our parents too.

We were excited when our gingerbread man came back. We received over 50 postcards from him. He brought us presents too.

We made our own gingerbread man in class and had the cafeteria bake it for us. The children made sure to tell the cafeteria workers not to peek until it was done. So cute!

We got to decorate him and had even more fun eating him!

Another fun activity that we did this week was to make Olaf and write about who we would melt for. This was lots of fun for them.

We are buddies with Mrs. Armstrong's 3rd grade class. We got to meet them this week when they came to read to us. We hope to have them come more often next semester.

The highlight of the week was our winter carnival. Thanks to all of the parents that helped make this successful for us. We couldn't do it without your help.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday. See you in January.