What a busy week! We are trucking along and the kids are doing great! Thank you to all the families who have sent in a white T-shirt. Please keep them coming! Also, we need more family pictures for our bulletin board. If you haven’t sent in pictures of your cherub and his/her family, please do so; then I can add them to our display! Thank you!
Room #7 is full of writers! They are writing up a storm! It’s amazing to see how much they are writing. For the past few weeks, the cherubs have been working hard to remember all the different things that good writers do to create. Your child thinks about:
- Writing true stories that happen to them
- Visualizing their story so they can draw all the details
- Labeling their pictures
- Revising (Yes! Revising! “When you think you’re done, you’ve only just begun.”)
- Solving Problems – The boys and girls are independently attempting to solve problems as they arise while they work (e.g., need a new piece of paper, not sure what to write, writing words they don’t know)
- Using their circle words
And that’s just to name a few! This week, everyone focused on practicing something new that writers do: stretch out their words and write the corresponding sounds! In Writer’s Workshop, the kids are working diligently to identify as many sounds as they can. In order to do this, they stretch out their words like a rubber band so that they can hear the sounds. If they can identify what sounds they hear, they write them down. This is tricky work, and your writers are off to a fantastic start!
Wowza! Read to Self is going so well! The boys and girls have been concentrating on building their stamina, and they are up to 6 whole minutes of reading the words, reading the pictures, and retelling their stories without stopping! What impressive work! As part of our Daily 5 work, two new “centers” will be introduced over the next three weeks: Word Work and Work on Writing. Stay tuned to hear more when the time arrives!
Math Stations:
· Finger Count Fun – At this station, students worked on number recognition in two different ways: recognizing how many fingers are held up and showing a specific number on their hands!
· Build a Staircase – This week, this fan favorite got a bit trickier! Instead of working with dot dice, the boys and girls used number dice. In this manner, they practiced their number recognition. Working with a partner, the boys and girls of Room #7 took turns rolling a die. They then stacked cubes together to represent that number. Once the partners finished building their staircases (1-6), they took turns rolling the die to disassemble them!!
· Great Dice Race – This independent activity required students to roll dice and trace the number their dice had landed on. The students continued rolling and tracing until a particular number won!
· Shape Sort – Using a variety of different sized triangles, rectangles, squares, and
circles, the boys and girls worked hard to sort them on their shape mats!
· My Mini Ten Frame Book – At this center, students used BINGO dobbers to represent specific numbers on 10 frames! They each had their own book with a different number on each page. Lastly, they received practice tracing those numbers and number words!
· 1 - 10 Puzzles – The kiddos concentrated on putting together a variety of puzzles. On the bottom of each puzzle were the numbers 1-10. This station had the students working both to recognize those numerals and put them in consecutive order! The pictures also helped them to check their sequencing!
On Thursday, the students learned about buddy lines. Buddy lines help the students when comparing the amount of different objects. For example, when looking at a graph, sometimes it’s difficult to tell which column has more in it. However, if one draws a line from one item to the next until one can no longer draw anymore, that person will be able to discern which has more or less, and how many more or less. To practice this skill, the students partnered up and worked with each other’s names. After lining up their names, they drew buddy lines from one letter to the other and then finally, determined whose name had more letters and whose name had less. The cherubs had a blast during the activity and can’t wait to use buddy lines in their everyday lives!
As you know, Room #7 has been working on their rhyming words. They learned that rhyming words rhyme when they have the same ending sound. On Wednesday, the class read The Hungry Thing. This book describes a ravenous monster that continually asks the townspeople to Feed Him. When he asks for food, though, he uses made-up words that rhyme with the actual food he wants. For example, the Hungry Thing asks for “gollipops” when he really wants lollipops! The class became rhyming experts and was able to shout out together exactly what the Hungry Thing really meant to say. Afterwards, I was the Hungry Thing and some boys and girls had to make up rhymes for the food they were holding. For example, one student said he would give me some born instead of the actual food, corn. The kids loved this activity and we will definitely be doing this again!
On Tuesday, to go along with our Alphafriend of the week, Tiggy Tiger, the kids tore pieces of autumn- colored paper to decorate their October calendars! They formed a tree making a stamp of their arms and hands. Next, they created a colorful fall tree with their torn paper. What pieces of art!
Have a fabulous long weekend!