Working with Words

We've been working with words with our morning messages this week. First we read together as Ms. Heather writes- this is also when concepts such as phonics, word spacing, capital letter usage and punctuation are introduced as Ms. Heather "thinks out loud" while she writes. After reading, we answer the question, letting the student described either write or spell out his/ her name. Then, we take turns coming up to find different letters and words in the message.

finding the name in our message

finding the word furry- hmm -starts with f

finding the sight word "is"

We also used our Word Wall to work with words!

What letter goes /p/?

stretching to show us the word "at"

There were many letter and number matches made at our match and clip center yesterday:

We had some fun today making heart trees for our February placemats:

Letter Builders are always a busy center:

And, we also worked on our shape/ number books and a floor puzzle. Ms. Heather was one happy teacher when she heard one friend say to another before starting the puzzle "Ok, if we disagree about where it goes, we have to stop and talk about it." Ta Da! Our first group to get the puzzle finished on their own!

Monday & Tuesday, 1/28-1/29

We sewed our class crazy quilt last week!

We have been working hard so far this week! While unfortunately I have no pictures of us from Monday, we had a great day! We read our polar bear magazine, did some graphing, got started on our number/shape books, played with playdough and built with the blocks. We did a great job practicing opposites with a memory game in the pocket chart at circle time, and read a fun alphabet book about little green peas (LMNOPeas) working their way through the letters.

Today we were busy as well! We spent a bit longer at circle time taking turns using the LetterSchool app to practice numeral formation. After successfully tracing a number exactly right, we all enjoyed the surprises on screen. I think the favorite was when the four turned into a fuse and exploded like a firecracker!

Once everyone had a turn, we split up into our center groups.

We made fantastic frogs using only hearts for our February calendar.

We built with legos on the rug in our cooperative learning center.

We worked on another couple of pages in our number and shape books.

Lastly, we drew some self portraits. We also did this the first week of school, and I saved them. We'll do it again at the end of the year so we can all see how our pictures have changed at the beginning, middle and end of the school year!

Right before snack, we sat down on the carpet to do a floor puzzle as a class, since it is something that has been quite a challenge for small groups at center time. Everyone got an edge piece, and we went around fitting them in, talking about matching color, shape and edges. Then we filled in the middle. Hopefully, we will be ready tomorrow to try again to tackle a big puzzle in small groups!

Today is PAJAMA DAY!

We all wore our pj's to school today, and had a comfy cozy morning! After dot painting a quilt on our Qq page for morning work and before heading over to Fellowship Hall for The Tigger Movie, we had some time to play with our friends in the classroom.

Some friends built with blocks.

Some friends supervised the popcorn popping.

Some friends did some sticker sticking.

And some of us experimented with folded paper cutting!

Then, we were off to the movies! Everyone found a good spot to spread out their blanket, cuddle up with a stuffed animal, eat some popcorn, and watch the show.

Wednesday, Jan. 23

We started off our day today building some Ee's for morning work, to remind us of the letter we worked on last week. We also all got to meet our new classmate- we love new friends! Then, at circle time, we talked about our new letter: Qq. Quinten was our expert, and with his help we came up with a whole bunch of words: quiet, quick, queen, quilt, quit, quarter and of course, Quinten! After sorting out some Ee and Qq picture cards, some exercise as we ran in place quickly/ slowly/ quickly, and adding some quilts to the reading tent, we were off to centers!

First off, we had a group gluing fabric squares to make quilted Qq's:

We also had groups working on a 1-20 number puzzle:

We did it!

working together

Mrs. Horton's group finished up our MLK, Jr magazine, then worked on lacing skills: pulling the string all the way through, getting the string just where you want it to go. (These skills will be really important for tomorrow, when we work on a crazy class quilt.)

Our last center was sticker math. We had to fill in the correct number of boxes on a 10 frame with stickers. The tricky part was making sure we stopped at the correct number, and didn't get carried away with all the cute stickers and fill everything up!

After cleaning up, we had another circle time to go over the calendar. We were excited to see we were up to day 83-> our 100's Day party is getting close! After reading another story about our favorite patchwork elephant Elmer, we had our snack and then headed to the playground. See you tomorrow!

Friday, Jan. 18

Happy Friday! Our milk jug patchwork elephants and snow globes are finished- they came out pretty cute! Snow globes are in the backpacks, and the elephants will come home next week. The elephants are a good match for the ones we made on the flannelboard yesterday.

 

First thing this morning we worked on putting our Ee homework pictures on the big letter shapes. There were lots of eagles, elephants and eggs, as well as words that begin with Ee such as eat.

  

At circle time, we read a book about Martin Luther King, Jr. We learned that he dreamed of a world where people treated each other kindly, regardless of differences in color, dress, ability, etc. We also read through a big copy of our Let's Find Out magazine that told us about how people can be different from each other in lots of ways on the outside, but be alike on the inside. We'll finish reading our magazine next week and bring them home to read with our families.

We only had 3 centers this morning, so that we would have some extra time to do some cooking! Using  refrigerated breadstick dough, we stretched, coiled and molded "elephant ears" for snack. We drizzled them with melted butter, sprinkled cinnamon sugar on top and let them bake 10 minutes for  a yummy treat.

Our three centers this morning were watercolor painting, magnetic letter matching and pattern blocks.

using watercolor paints for free art

matching thematic words

matching letters

vowels and sight words

I did it!

a job well done

What kind of creature is that?

working hard

finding just the right shapes

Don't forget we have an extra long weekend, and won't come back to school until 

Wednesday next week. Have a great weekend!