December 19, 2014

Hi!

Just a few quick updates from the fish class:

• You may have seen a teddy bear picture come home this week. The children practiced "teddy bear breathing" during OT to help us get our engines just right. Your child might be able to teach you this technique to help reduce holiday stress! :)

• We baked our gingerbread cookies today in preparation for Monday's decorating party at 2:05. We are excited to sing some songs for you and celebrate the season.

• We went to "Winter Wonderland" during our PE class today. I have put some pictures on our FLICKR page. The tab to link you to these photos is at the top of our blog homepage.

• Tuesday is Wear Your PJs to School Day for the fish class!

I hope this covers everything! A special thank you for contributing to the mission gifts. Your generosity will surely make a little girl's holiday very merry!

Kristen

Dear Fish Families:

Thank you for all of the cookie decorating donations coming in. The fish class is lucky to have such supportive parents!

Here is a glimpse of our week:

Writers' Workshop:  We are wrapping up our "writing like scientists" unit. The children picked a piece to publish and we talked about how writers find the big idea before giving their book a title. We will be writing our covers and editing next week.

Readers' Workshop:  Your readers learned that readers re-read books using a storytellers voice. This is how young readers work to develop fluency and expression. 

Literacy: We have learned how to properly form all uppercase letters during our handwriting time. We will begin lowercase letter formation after our December vacation. Using our gingerbread stories, the children are working on sequencing stories. They know that the beginning of the story takes place during the first couple of pages and the end is the last couple. The middle is everything else in between. This is helping them develop re-telling skills.

Math:  We have been working on teen numbers this week. The children know that a teen number is 2 digits starting with a 1 in the tens place. They were surprised to learn that some teen numbers (10,11, and 12) don't have "teen" in their names. That is why we sometimes call teens tricky teens. With the introduction to teen numbers, the children are now using ten frames. We are doing quick looks where the children quickly see a group of dots and need to name the number. They are being given 2-3 quick glances at this point in the year to help them become more comfortable with these larger numbers and groups of dots. I introduced the children to the calculator as a math tool. They enjoyed exploring with the solar panel and reading the numbers on the display screen. They also can find the clear key. 

Visual Arts:  The children have been busy creating gingerkids and gingerbread houses this week. They are really enjoying this unit!  Our winter quilt is up and looks beautiful.

Book of the Week:  The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett

Song of the Week: "10 Little Gingerkids" 


Up Coming Events:

• Early Release-12/17
• Monday, 12/22 at 2:05 Gingerbread decorating party (families welcome)
• Tuesday, 12/23 Wear your pjs to school day!
• Winter Break- 12/24-1/2
• Word of Week- am
• Handwriting- Uppercase letter review
• Phonics- sh

Happy Weekend,

Kristen

December 5

Dear Fish Families:

Here is a glimpse of our busy week together:

Writers' Workshop:  We are writing like scientists! The children are working on taking their observations and writing/drawing/labeling across more than one page. The are stretching out words to write the sounds they hear and are being reminded to leave a 2 finger space between each word they write.

Readers' Workshop:  Your readers learned that readers go back and re-read when they get stuck on a word, fix a mistake, or if something doesn't make sense. They are learning to use all the strategies (superpowers) they have learned when they come to a word they don't know. We have been talking about the sequence of stories using various gingerbread stories. The children are talking about similarities and differences with different variations of this tale. We had a book talk using The Napping House. We focused on what happened at the beginning and ending of the story. The children then discussed the events in the middle of the story. They were making great personal connections, talking about parts we liked or found funny, and lots of  predicting was happening!

Math:  Through the use of attribute blocks, the children classified and sorted by shape, size, and color. The also counted the number of blocks in each group. We talked about sorting rules. As an extension of this lesson, the children identified missing blocks from sorted sets. A challenging activity for the children this week was identifying shapes using touch and not sight. Shapes were placed in a "feely box" and the children had to pick out shapes by attribute (ie. a 3 sided shape with 3 vertices, or a 4 sided shape with all 4 sides being equal length). We made a class bar graph of our favorite colors and compared numbers. 

Visual Arts:  We made winter trees and snowpeople this week. We will be using them to make a class winter quilt on our bulletin board. We are also making gingerkids!

Book of the Week:  The Gingerbread Man by Karen Schmidt

Song of the Week: "The Gingerbread Man" by Jack Hartmann

Donation Requests:

• rick rack
• small craft buttons
• ribbon
• foam stickers

Up Coming Events:

• Gingerbread stories unit
• Early Release-12/17
• Monday, 12/22 at 2:05 Gingerbread decorating party (families welcome)
• Winter Break- 12/24-1/2
• Word of Week- the
• Handwriting- I, T, & J
• Phonics- s and z

Fondly,

Kristen