Seussy Stuff

I wanted to share some pictures from our Seuss Day on Friday.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!  I will also be sending you all an email with your child and their "twin" from Thing One and Thing Two Day!

After reading The Lorax many of the students had fun recreating the Truffala Trees with the play dough so many of you graciously made or bought and sent in to us.  Thank you so very much!

I read the story The Lorax out loud.  During one part I gave the students these papers.  I did not show the pictures in the book from this part.  They were told to visualize (make the picture in their head) while I was reading out loud to them.  Then they were told to draw what they saw in their heads.  They did a great job with this project!

Here they are working in their pods working on the visualization lesson.

Another pod working on creating what they saw in their minds when I was reading out loud.

During Reading Workshop today we all picture walked and read Dr. Seuss books to our partners today.  I was amazed how how many of them were reading the words.  They are becoming amazing readers!

These two were finding popcorn words in their book.

These two were picture walking their book and commenting on how the author used big red words to make the reader excited to read them.

These two are taking turns reading the book to each other.  They like to play "teacher" during partner reading and take turns sitting in the chair and reading a story to her "student".

These two boys are searching the picture for details that might help them read an unknown word.  They are all getting really good at using their reading strategies to read unknown words.  Remind them to use their strategies at home (Eagle Eye - looking at the pictures, Lips the Fish - getting your mouth ready to make the first sound in a word, Chunky Monkey - looking for "chunks" of words you can read within a word, Flippy Dolphin - flip the short vowel sound to a long vowel sound, Skippy Frog - skip over the words and keep going (we also call it "driving through" the whole word), Stretchy Snake - stretching out each letter sound in the word and blending them together).

 

What we have been doing in Science!

Here is a little glimpse into what we have been doing for science.  I added in a little snow work when we had snow on the ground (but I brought it inside in buckets, it was way to cold to take them out).

We are learning about archeologist's and paleontologists in science.  Here our future scientists are digging for dinosaur bones and fossils thanks to the dollar store and some plaster of Paris!

The students had to figure out what tools they needed and how to use them to carefully excavate the treasures inside.

They were so excited when they started to actually "dig down" to the bones, shells and rocks.

Thank you to all of the parents who sent in newspaper!  We are finally able to start our volcano building project.  This will take us a few weeks, but everyone is so excited to start constructing our paper mache volcano!

The students have been doing research by consulting our volcano books in our classroom library.  They study the pictures (for form) before starting to shape their volcano.

These girls are working together to create the volcano.  The children are in charge of negotiating how many people can work at this center at a time, they refill the glue and water mixture themselves and they cut up the newspaper themselves.  They are learning to work in cooperative groups, negotiate tasks, solve problems and divide responsibilities.  And they just think they are having fun!

This volcano will be reading to paint on Monday.  Some of the students are thinking about adding trees and dinosaurs.  They thought about adding more scenery after researching through the volcano books in our classroom library.  They are so smart!

Another very popular science activity is working with the test tubes and performing experiments using different colored water, vinegar, salt, baking soda and the eye droppers.   Thank you again for all of the support to get these materials donated through our Donor's Choose projects this year!

 

More science experiments in progress.

 

Seuss Week is Coming! and why you should have your child 20 minutes a night.

Here is a little something I found on the internet that some of you might like to print out and place into your kiddos lunch boxes/backpacks.  I thought they were too cute!

 

Here is another really relevant piece of information for you.  This explains why you are always getting those "don't forget to read with your child" emails from me every week!

 

 

100th Day Fun

Sorry I am a little late posting these photos.  We had a great time celebrating our 100th Day of School.  I was looking back at picture from the beginning of the school year and I am amazed at how much they have grown!  Let me share some of the pictures of their projects with you and some of their writing.

 

 

I wanted to show you some of their illustrations and some of their writing from the 100th day unit.  They are so creative.  I really enjoyed reading their homework project and adding their drawings.

 

I don't think I am going to age well!  Me, being 100 years old.

This was their welcome to the 100th Day of School.

I love the homework they did with you at home.  At school we drew pictures of ourselves at 100 years old.  They all did a fantastic job of picturing themselves in the future.

I love the facial hair!

I think lots of the kids are planning on glasses when they are 100.

Many of the children really channeled their inner "grandma" and "grandpa" for their pictures.

Ok, this was the funniest one ever.  This little guy said he drew himself as an old French guy.  I have no idea how he came up with becoming French when he was 100!  I like the neckerchief too!

This girl is rocking the bun on top of the head!

I love the detail on his cane!  They are also starting to add settings to their pictures without being reminded to add detail.

These next pictures show what they would buy if they had 100 dollars.  These were too cute!

She wants to buy a talking monkey!

 

I hope you enjoyed this little peek into our 100th day!



 

Volcanoes and Dinosaurs have taken over F 16!

We are in a prehistoric state in our room.  We are learning so much about volcanoes and about dinosaurs.  These two subjects have taken over our reading, our writing, our math and even our letter of the week.  Let me show you some of the highlights from the first two weeks of February.

The children are learning about chemical reactions in this science lab.  They combine baking soda and vinegar (thank you parents for sending it in) and watch the chemical reaction that is created. 

We are doing this science lab because this looks like a volcano erupting.  The kids cannot get enough of this lab.

The children here are developing fine motor skills by using the eye dropper (which we got through the Donors Choose project you helped to fund).  They are also negotiating how to take turns, how to share resources and they are expanding their vocabulary and their speaking and listening skills by discussing what they are observing.

This is a neat dinosaur themed math game using geometric shapes to create patterns and pictures.

We watched several short videos about volcanoes from Discovery  and National Geographic Kids.  I also shared with them books and pictures I brought back from my trip to Hawaii.  I was lucky enough to go to the Volcano National Park.  I even have some lava rocks which you will see later in this post.  This is one child documenting what she learned from some of the books and videos we have been using for our research.

This child is studying a lava rock and documenting what she observes (sorry it is so blurry).

This child is very closely examining this lava rock from Hawaii.  They had lots of questions.  Seeing the rocks up close helped them to understand that lava is hot, melted rock, and when the lava cooled it formed these rocks.

This child is examining another lava rock.

This child referred to himself as a vulcanologist! 

These children are building a volcano in the block area.  We also talked about symmetry.

This child is using the dinosaurs to sort them and arrange them from largest to smallest.

We are having a ball with this unit of study.  I have brought in lots of books on these topics from the St. Charles County Library.  We have some very serious researchers in our room.  I love it when they find out something new about either a dinosaur or about a volcano.  They are devouring the books and dinosaurs and volcanoes are starting to show up in writing workshop in some of the books they are writing. 

Next, when we get more newspapers donated, we will start constructing our volcanoes.  We are all so excited!  Check back soon to see our latest.

Friendship Party

I wanted to share a few pictures of the Friendship party and some of there Valentine Boxes.  Thank you to the H's, the C's and the S's for putting together the party and being there to help.  We all had a great time.

Pin the Lips on Ms. Arrendale

I love the art work.  I look good!

Round and Round we go, where we stop, nobody knows!

Now I have lips in my eye.  This was a fun game!  We all laughed and laughed!

The was called "heart-a-stack".  The kids worked so hard on staking all of the hearts.  It was really hard!

 

New video's to support classroom concepts

I thought I would share what we are watching in class with you. 

These two videos support the rule of "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking".  We are starting to get into more complex rules during word work to help them read more difficult text and understand/decode the words.


They love these silly Numtums.  Whatever helps our visual learners "get" the numerical concepts we are working on works for me.  We also love these money songs!

One of our all time favorites is still  Alpha Blocks.  They are amazing and the kids really get into the episodes and remember so much about the letter sounds and blending.  This is one of their favorite episodes.