TGIF!

We've made it to the end of our week studying the five senses. During centers today Ms. Wendy and I pulled small groups to complete our sense of smell and our sense of taste. Ms. Wendy was in charge of smelly jars. There were four different jars containing lemon extract, peppermint extract, apple cider vinegar, and fresh squeezed orange juice (although it was from Sunday so had molded a bit...eww). Our friends took turns smelling each jar and putting a happy or sad face in the box for that jar if they liked it or not. Those sheets will come home on Monday but for now here are some pictures of their reactions!

At my table we performed a taste test of something sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Each friend tried a marshmallow, lemon sour patch kid, pretzel, and bittersweet chocolate. If they liked it they put a happy face in the box and if not a sad face. Much to my surprise a lot of our friends enjoyed the bittersweet chocolate! Check out their reactions to the taste test...I love Tristan's expression, he's not so sure about this so called "chocolate"!

Today is...Thursday

We've reached Thursday and the last letter for the week, "D"! We practiced the letter "D" in our 4 different centers but also added back "C", "O", and "A" to the mix to begin to blend the sounds. Our friends have been working hard all week, I'm so proud of them! We continued working on our study of Australia this afternoon by webbing what we know about flying on an airplane. We then started to develop our wonder questions to help us research for our construction.

Here are some pictures that describe our afternoon in centers, enjoy!
Computer Center

Construction Center

Dramatic Play Center

Math Games Center

Legos Center

Art Center

Library Center

Discovery Center

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!

What a wonderful Wednesday! We added another letter today, "A", and used our centers to practice writing and sounding it out. We used our letter "C" we learned on Monday to blend the sounds together as well. To review all of our letters we read "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and played a letter naming game afterward.

During our theme time, we watched a video that described the Australian flag and what it symbolized. After, we made a venn diagram to compare the Australian flag to the American flag. We learned so many similarities about the flags like the colors and the symbolism of the stars but they are also very different. Click on our venn diagram below to learn more!

Lastly, I've included a picture of our behavior system in the classroom. These are the smiley faces that go home on their behavior sheets in their daily folder. I have added warning levels to our chart to help remind us when we have received a verbal warning and are on our way to a not so happy face. I hope this helps you to understand more where their smiley faces are coming from and that the children are fully aware of where they are throughout the day. Thanks for your cooperation with checking and signing their behavior charts each night, your support means the world to me!

O says...

Today we started our day by talking about our sense of hearing and reading the book "Polar Bear Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?". We moved into learning about the letter "O" and the sound that it makes. We rotated through our centers that we learned yesterday practicing writing/making our letter, looking it up in our picture dictionaries, gluing O cerel to the letter, and playing the game "Bang" to practice our sight words. Today was the first day we were able to do shared journal. This is our writing time that will occur everyday after specials (look for a note about this coming home soon!). Miss Wendy shared a story with us today so we could learn the routine for our journal time. Our friends did an excellent job asking questions to get all those juicy details and drawing a picture that captured them. Tomorrow we will do the writing portion of the story. After recess, we began our year-long study of Australia. We looked at a map of the world to determine where Australia is relative to where we live. We decided that an airplane would be our best method of transportation there, so we used a graphic organizer to record who of our friends have been on an airplane before and who have not. The names inside the cicle are friends who have been on an airplane and those on the outside have not. We can't wait to get started on research of how to build the airplane!!
I hope you enjoy looking at some of the pictures that describe our day!

Magnificent Monday

Our second week of school is off to a great start! We started our study of the five senses this week with our sense of sight. Each friend decorated their own pair of binoculars and we read the book "Baby Bear Baby Bear, What Do You See?". When we went outside for recess we brought our binoculars for a quick game of "I Spy".

We also began our Cindy Cupp reading program and OG phonics. We started with the letter "C". We drew a "C" in sand, formed it with a wiki stick, molded it out of play dough, and glued cotton balls to a big "C". We also started our first four sight words: Jack, Jilly, can, and play. If you have a chance, please go over the sight words and our new letter sound "C" says /k/ with your child.

Lastly, this afternoon we went to the media center for our orientation with Ms. Thomas. She showed us how to use a place holder stick and scan our book and card at checkout. We all got to check out a book today that we are going to keep at school to read throughout the week and hopefully with our 5th grade buddy readers.

Busy Busy Busy!

The first week of school flew by and our friends were busy learning the routines of the classroom & building but also about each other. We focused on "All About Me" using different materials to write our names, discussing our favorite colors (which became our first class big book), graphing the number of people in our families, making paper doll versions of ourselves, and graphing our hair color.

To start off our week we read a book called "On My Very First Day of School I Met...". It was about a child who met a bunch of crazy looking monsters on her first day of school but the best part of all was that they met her too. The friends in our room get along so well already you'd think that they had known each other forever. So to go along with the story we made our own crazy monsters out of play dough, here are a few pictures to give you an idea.

Below are some pictures of our charts and graph we made last week! This week we will be talking about the 5 senses, beginning our Cindy Cupp reading program, and discussing our journey to Australia. Stay tuned for more updates!

(Click on the picture to enlarge)

WOW!

I am so impressed by my sweet friends after the first two days of school! They've become such a tight knit group of friends already, it's wonderful! We are still learning about everything there is to do in our classroom as well as the school so each day is new and exciting. This coming week we will be working on establishing our routine, developing classroom rules, learning about each others families, and beginning our year long theme of Australia! I am so excited to introduce the students to a whole new part of the world and to see their reaction when I tell them we are taking a trip there. Just a few reminders: please be sure to sign off on your child's behavior each day in their daily folder and if you send lunch money in it needs to be in a bag labeled with your child's name, my name, and the amount inside. Thanks for all of your help getting our school year off to a great start!

Welcome back!

The first day of the 2011-2012 school year is just around the corner and I can't wait to meet my sweet friends! Please check in with our classroom blog as often as you can, it will be one form of our communication throughout the year. The students and I will be posting pictures and informaton about the activities happening in our classroom. A link to my email is on the right-hand side of the page, please feel free to email me anytime you have a question. I look forward to meeting all of you very soon!