Notes for Friday

First, I apologize for the text problems on the last blog. I wasn't able to fix these without redoing it entirely... and wanted to get the info out to you.

I forgot to mention an annual Dublin holiday tradition...On the last day before break the entire school gathers in the old gym for a holiday sing along. It's quite crowded and usually standing room only, but if you're planning to be around school and would like to pop in, it's at 10 am.

Please don't forget to send in a wrapped book for your child and an 8 oz. hand sanitizer.

Thank you

Weeks of December 5th- 16th

"It's the most wonderful time of the year!"

These are the days I feel fortunate to work with 5 and 6 year olds.
Thanks to Liz Vachon for creating our festive door. All children were delighted to see it go up.

We continue to smile daily as the energy levels keep rising with holiday excitement.

Our holiday party will take place on Friday, December 16th at 2:30 pm. We have many crafts/projects planned and look forward to having many parents join us. Please remember to send in an 8 oz. hand sanitizer and a wrapped book tagged for your child from you. With this gift we will celebrate the gift of reading.

In class this week and last:
Reader's Workshop:

Students learned about characters. We read several stories throughout the week and looked closely at the characters and identified main characters. We carried this study over into our Writer's Workshop as well.

We also continued practicing retelling stories. This week we added "readers retell using some of the key words from the story".
Writer's Workshop:

Last week we focused on characters. We learned that a character is who or what the story is about. We talke about how an object can become a character if we make it sound like a person. Hadley wrote a cute piece about a naughty house using this lesson. Alivia and Austin wrote lovely books about their moms. Filip was drawing about a train. It's so fun to see the different topics chosen by each of the students.

This week we're working to add details to our illustrations to help make our stories better. Some children took this lesson and added better facial expressions on faces while others showed more backkground to their stories. Please note that all shown below are not neccessarily finished. for example, Merrick was writing about a school catching on fire...notice the direction the arms are going, great details to add to the understanding of the story.

An added mini lesson we had was "writer's use readable writing". We looked closely at using spaces and correct form.

"One time my sister found a puppy. she loved that puppy."

"When I got out of my mom's belly her sister was happy and my grandma cried.

When it was Christmas I was excited that I got my purple Christmas tree.

Math:
New games were introduced helping children with numbers. We played a tug-a-war game with chips and dice pulling the chip towards us with each roll of the dice. We also played "Go forward-Go back" learning to read and use + and - signs.

We concluded our gingerbread theme by decorating gingerbread and eating them. Just after taking our first bite of the cookies students were asked to color a picture to represent the part of the cookie they ate first. The following photos show how students used this info. to create two class graphs. We were able to compare a bar graph with a pie graph.

Work Stations:

Last week...

We extended our gingerbread unit through our work stations last week.

Magnet center- Students built sight words (run, can, man, you, see" in our Leapfrog "word whammer".
Art- candle creations
123-patterns with holiday stampers
Star-matching holiday words/pictures
ABC- sound spelling holiday words
Writing- making a holiday wish list
Drama-retelling gingerbread story with pictures from the story
Games-sorting syllables and recording them
and more!

This week...

Thanks to the families who donated the following books to our classroom through book fair certificates!

Happy news for us...we have a classroom paraprofessional. Her name is Erin Noel. We are thrilled to have her. She is quickly picking up on our routines and needs. We're so very thankful to have her.