Week of Feb. 16 to Feb. 20

We had many special events this week including 100th day of School, Game and Pizza Day, performing "The Hat" at Day 5 Alive and Red, White and Blue day.

100th Day of School:
We read "Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten". We shared our 100 day collections. We read a 100 day of school poem and sang a 100 day of school song. We made 100 day of school hats. We completed our 100 day of school collection page in our kindergarten memory book. We wrote about what we would buy if we had $100.00 in writer's workshop. We read 2 more books about the 100th day of school during rest time. In math, we sorted and counted our 100 day of school gorp. We ate our gorp after doing our math with it.

Game and Pizza Day
We had game and pizza day on Wednesday afternoon to celebrate earning 100 stars for star behavior. We played games in small groups and made individual mini pizzas. The mini pizzas were delicious! We had fun playing games together.

Day 5 Alive-"The Hat"
We really enjoyed performing our play "The Hat" at Day 5 Alive. It was fun creating our headbands and acting out the story. We have gotten many postive comments from other grade levels. It was a fun experience. We hope to perform one more time this year. It is a fun way to celebrate our learning.

Red, White & Blue Day-
We started the day with red, white and blue stations including red, white and blue play dough, red, white and blue dot painting, red, white and blue bracelets, red, white and blue headbands. We read "Duck for President". Our shared reading for the day was a mini book called "The Flag". In math, we talked about the quarter. We looked at the quarter and we practiced counting the quarter up to $1.00. We also practiced skip counting. We used a 100 chart and colored all of the numbers we count when we count by 5's in red. On the back, we colored all of the numbers we count when we count by 2's in blue. Then we practiced counting using out 100's chart. Social Studies-We read about George Washington. We also read a story about our flag. Then we created our own flags. We tried to remember that the American flag has 13 stripes with 7 red and 6 white. Some kids made our first flag that had 13 stars to represent the 13 colonies and some kids made our current flag with 50 stars.

We had a fun week!

Week of Feb. 9 to Feb. 13

Our themes this week were Valentine's day, winter, 100th day of school, and President's day.
Some of the books we read this week were "I Need a Valentine", "Dinosaur Valentine", "Kangaroo Kazoo", "Clifford's First Valentine" and "The Night Before Valentine's Day".
Shared Reading-We read a rhyming poem called "I Love You". We read our little book called "Kit". We read the Keely Kangaroo song together.
Reading Activities-We had independent reading time 3 times this week. We had read with a partner one time this week. We did letter Kk activities including writing the letter Kk, finding the letter Kk, and writing Kk words.
*We have been working on our play "The Hat" a little bit each day. We made our headbands this week. We are performing on Thursday, Feb. 19 at 2:15 in the gym at Day 5 Alive.
Writing-We wrote 4 times this week. Our mini lessons included practicing our star (sight) words, using a beginning, middle and end, sound spelling, letter and card making.
Rest Time-We are still reading our puppy story called "Noodle".
Math-We made heart graphs with candy hearts. We tally marked our colors and then made them into graphs. We had workjobs on Tuesday. We had math stations on Wednesday with geoboards, pegboards, pattern blocks, and counting/sorting bears. We did penny math on Thursday in honor of Abe Lincoln's birthday. On Friday, we will have our Valentine party during math.
Social Studies-This week we have been focusing on America and presidents since Monday is president's Day. We read and talked about our new president. Then we wrote what we would do if we were president. We read a story about the American Flag and then drew our own flag. We reviewed and talked about the flag. We talked about Abe Lincoln.

Week of Feb. 2 to Feb. 6

This week we have been doing winter activities, Groundhog Activities and I Love to Read Activities!
Groundhog's Day-We had lots of fun on Groundhog's day. We read and acted out a poem. We read the book "Geoffrey Groundhog Predicts the Weather". We wrote our own Newspaper columns about our weather predictions. We made a mini-book about Groundhog's day and we made a stick puppet. We also went online to find out about the famous groundhop Puxsutawney Phil. Phil says "Six More Weeks for Winter!". We saw pictures of the famous groundhog. The website is groundhog.org. Here are two of our newspaper articles:

Today is Groundhogs day. The groundhogs peeks out of his hole. Six more weeks of winter.
by Kyle

His shadow was not here. How will spring come so fast? by Nicolle

*I did a little editing. Too bad I couldn't include the drawings-they are great!

Here are some other things we did this week:

Dress as Favorite Character day: We had lots of fun dressing up on Wednesday. Lots of creative costumes. We shared our favorite character and book at morning meeting. I read 7 of the books that were brought for Favorite Character day. The other books we just looked through. We had many Barbies and princesses. We had 3 Fancy Nancys. We had football players, hockey players, a ninja turtle, Darth Vader, a Power Ranger, Pikachu, Sponge Bob. Cinderella, a boy with a bucket (loved that book!) and Hello Kitty. Thanks for all of your help getting kids their costumes together. It was a fun way to celebrate reading and books!

This week in reading: We are learning about the letter Ll with Larry Lion. We assessed the sounds p,g,f. We are having independent reading daily. We read a new mini book, Can it fit?-it came home yesterday. We learned a new word family-the "it" family (sit, fit, mit, lit,quit).

This week in writing: We wrote newspaper articles on Monday about groundhog's day. Tuesday we talked about having a beginning, middle and end for our stories. Wednesday and Thursday we had a mini lesson on "snap" words. Words that we can write in a snap. We had a big list of words we already know how to spell. We are going to add some of them in our writing folder.

This week in math: We are continuing our work with money. We are counting pennies, nickels and dimes. We had workjobs on Tuesday. Everyone is now on the yellow workjobs. We are doing a little addition. We are still practicing number writing.

Social Skills: This week we are busy making posters for our Unthinkables. We have made a poster for Rockbrain, Glassman, Braineater, Mean Jean. Today we are going to make one for DOF(defeater of fun) and Wasfunnyonce (being silly at the wrong times). We are writing down the names for the Unthinkable and their trait at the bottom. Three kids are drawing and coloring a picture of them. Then we write down at least 2 ideas of what we can do to defeat that behavior on lightning bolts. Some students are sharing new ideas for Unthinkables-we are going to make posters for them too.

Week of Mon. Jan. 26 to Fri. Jan. 30

Here are some of the things we did last week:
We started computer last week. We practiced logging on and logging off. We explored a drawing program. We are going back on Tuesday (day 4)
Read Alouds: Give A Cat A Cupcake, The Hat, Fifi Ferret's Flute,The Mitten, The Mitten (different version).
Shared Reading: Poem "Stop and Go", Fifi Fish song, Pat and Nan
Reading Activities-We had Independent Reading 4 of the 5 days. The other day we did read to partner or shared reading. We talked about the letter Ff and the sound it makes. We found the letter Ff around the room and on our Fifi fish poster. We practiced sounding out and blending words.
Writing-We did writer's workshop every day last week. Our mini lessons included sketching our pictures, then writing and then adding more to our drawings. We also talked about periods at the end of our sentences and spacing our words. We practiced sound spelling. We also talked about planning our writing. One way is to plan the beginning, middle and end of our stories. We are going to continue to work on planning our writing.
Rest Time-We finished our story "Dinosaur Cove Attack of the T-Rex". We started a new chapter book about a puppy called "Noodle".
Math-We practiced using a ruler and measuring to the nearest inch. We did workjobs on Tuesday. We continued practicing with the ruler. We also worked with money this week. We used the penny, nickel and dime.
Social Skills-We are making posters for our Unthinkables. We have made Glassman and Rockbrain. We have been brainstorming ways to defeat the Unthinkables.