We loved the crazy hair and crazy hats today! What a fun way to start off the week! We practiced writing the letter Bb today. We read a really great story called Bee-Bim Bop, by Linda Sue Park. This is such a fun book with rhyming and a great rhythm to the words. Ask me to tell you what bee-bim and bop mean in Korean! In math, we made solid shapes out of toothpicks and marshmallows. The hardest part was not eating the marshmallows! We made two kinds of pyramids, a cube and a triangular prism. In science, we read the book The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins. We talked about vocabulary that can be used to tell how strong the wind is blowing. Ask me to tell you about the pictures below and some of the words that can be used to describe the wind. Be ready for every other word to be blustery... Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe
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Today we started our day looking at these beautiful photographs. We discussed mountains, valleys and hills. We talked about what the differences are between a hill and a mountain.
We visited Colorado today, and read an interesting book called Maria's Mysterious Mission, by Claudia Cangilla McAdam. This story is about a llama who has come from South America and is now a pack animal for hikers in the Rocky Mountains. Ask me to tell you my favorite part, probably my least favorite, in the story. In science, we talked about meteorologists and how they predict the weather. Ask me to tell you what predict means. We identified weather symbols and are using them to collect data about the weather each day. We are looking at the sky, wind, precipitation and temperature and using a symbol on our charts to tell what the weather was like after lunch. We began talking about solid shapes in math. We introduced some vocabulary and looked at photographs of different things to identify their solid shape. In our Eureka curriculum we talk about cylinders, cubes, cones and spheres, but we also talked about rectangular and triangular prisms. Today I introduced the SeeSaw site to the children. This is a site where I can put books, lists of words, assignments, games and so many other things. This site is teacher and kid friendly by making it easy to add our voice so the children can listen to the directions or so I can hear them read some of their writing, word lists, or books I put on as an assignment. Since we had indoor recess, we skipped play time and had extra computer time. Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe We had a great discussion about these sea stacks. The children talked to their partners, speculating that they were formed by water dripping into cracks, or that they somehow came up from under the water. Of course, Billy Blue Hair gave a great explanation, involving food of course, that helped us understand better how these unusual landforms were created. Ask me to tell you about how these sea stacks are formed. Today the children drew and/or wrote the beginning middle and end of The Grumpy Goat story we have been working with this week. We made a line that showed how the goat's feelings changed throughout the story. We made the line go up as he felt happier and down during the sad parts of the story, and down to the very bottom when he was angry and grumpy. I'll send home the papers next week after I go through all of them.
Today we worked with tracing shapes, as well as drawing shapes with a ruler to get proper corners or vertices. I was looking through some math papers and noticed that many of the children had rounded corners, and we want to make sure that for accuracy in describing the shapes, we make some better angles, not curves. We wrote nonsense words today using the letters we have introduced in Really Great Reading. I said the word several times, encouraged the children to tap it out, then we checked it together and rewrote it as a word on the line next to the letters we wrote. I'll send these home next week as well as I didn't have time to look through all of them closely. From what I could see, they did a great job, although I need to remind them that when we do this kind of practice we use only lower case letters. We enjoyed a fun read aloud called The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel. This is a fun story about prairie dogs who get an unexpected tennis ball down their tunnel. Ask me to tell you the beginning, middle and end of this story. Have a great weekend! Miss Wolfe We read a beautiful story yesterday and today called Grumpy Goat, by Brett Helquist, about a friendless, grumpy goat who goes to live in Sunny Acres, the friendliest farm in the county. Ask me to tell you the story elements: characters, setting and the beginning, middle and end. This story shows who a character can change throughout the story. This goat changes from a grumpy goat to a happy goat at the end of the story, but goes through grief when something special to him goes away. Ask me to tell you what the characters did to help goat while he was grieving. This class often claps after stories they love. They LOVED this story, until we read Friendshape today which they then declared to be their favorite book ever. We continue to learn about landforms. This morning for our Picture Talk, we looked at this photograph. Ask me to tell you what I noticed. Yesterday we took a virtual field trip to look at some amazing landforms. We'd like to tell you about them as you go along on a beautiful, short journey that may have you calling your travel agent when you finish watching it! Be sure to look for hoodoos, arches, canyons, slot canyons, buttes and mountains. Today we went on another field trip, but this time to Alaska. We saw more beautiful mountains, valleys and glaciers. Ask me to tell you why we are grateful for plate tectonics! That's a difficult topic, and not really in our curriculum, but you can't just look at beautiful mountains and not wonder how they formed. Luckily, we have Billy Blue Hair to explain it for us. In math, we continued to talk about plane or flat shapes. We are focusing on the vocabulary as well as drawing the shapes.
Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe I was overwhelmed by all the holiday and plane crash stories when the kids came in today! I was very happy we were doing a writing from personal experience piece. We worked today on constructing a good beginning sentence for our piece. We are also working on stretching out the word to hear all the sounds. In Really Great Reading we are working on spelling 3 letter words with the letters we have introduced, but many of the children are able to use more letters and write more words, so writing is becoming easier for them. We will be learning about breaking words into syllables so spelling longer words will be easier for the children. Today we continued our study of the Native Americans, or First Peoples. We looked at and learned about the different kinds of homes they lived in and talked about why they had those kinds of houses. Ask me to tell you about Native American homes. In the afternoon, as part of our math warm-up, we made a pictograph that shows what Native American home we would like to live in. We used math words as we talked about the pictograph to talk about what we found out. We worked with pictures of shapes today, noting how one shape was different than the three other shapes in a group. We used the words from the word wall above to help use the most precise words we could to talk about the difference.
Have a nice evening! Miss Wolfe Today we did a guided drawing to create a turkey. First we sketched shapes and lines with a pencil. Then we went over the pencil with an oil pastel. Finally we used water color to paint our turkeys. Wait until you see these with their proud artists. Unfortunately, when we were cleaning up, some of the kids put their names on their papers, so I had to cover them up with stickers. My apologies, I should have told them not to! We read a beautiful book called We Are Grateful, by Traci Sorrell, that goes through the year telling about the gifts and challenges of each season. The story is told by a Cherokee with many words from their language, Tsalagi, included. We enjoyed sharing our gratitude scavenger hunt items. The children were so prepared and proud of their work! Thank-you for your support with this project. I hope you have a peaceful, happy and safe Thanksgiving!
Miss Wolfe We had a busy, short day! We studied these interesting landforms. Ask me to tell you what these are called! Learn all about this landform in the video below. We went shopping for books today. Your child brought home three books they chose from books we are no longer using from the book room. The kids were really excited about the books! I hope you enjoy them.
Have a great evening! Miss Wolfe This week we continued studying characters in stories. We read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and looked at text evidence that told us about her and the bears. We identified key events and used them to retell the beginning, middle and end of the story. We read a short story about a bear and a fox today. In the story, the fox was described as sneaky. We discussed the word sneaky, then I decided we should play a game of "True Confessions." You should have been here. Although I promised not to tell, I will just give you this little tidbit of information. About 75% of the confessions involved iPads, tablets, computers and your cell phones. You might want to change your passwords on those and on your office doors. These kids write things down when they don't remember. I expected stories of sneaking candy and donuts, and only one confession was about sneaking candy. It did involve scaling a refrigerator. There was also a late night visit to the kitchen for a few bites of some brownies. Honestly, I didn't even have to coax this out of them. They were happy little campers sharing their acts of sneakiness. We have only two children who are either not sneaky at all, who are shy, or possibly afraid I will spill the beans. I sure am glad they aren't sneaky at school! As part of our Read the USA and in recognition of Native American Heritage Month, we read Totem Tale, A Tall sTory from Alaska by Deb Vanasse. This story is about animals on a totem pole that get released one night, but fight over who should be on top when they need to get back on the totem pole or be left in the land of in-between or never-was. This book is great because it has a story in a story! It tells the story of the totem pole and why the animals were placed on the totem pole in that order. Ask me to tell you the story of the totem pole. We also worked with shades of meaning of words. The Totem Tale has rich language and used bold print to emphasize interesting verbs. We talked about what the word meant and thought of the words that could be used to say the same thing, although not as beautifully or interestingly. In math, we have started studying shapes. We worked with vocabulary we will use as we talk about the shapes. Right now we are working with flat shapes. The children worked with pattern blocks to put together some designs using only a certain number of prescribed pattern blocks. They also worked with stencils to make pictures using only shapes. We also looked at artwork to find shapes in the paintings. In our Picture Talks and discussions, we have been emphasizing asking questions. We have talked about the questions words and what they are asking. Sometimes children answer what they want to tell you and don't pay close enough attention to the questions words to find out what is being asked. This is something I am sure you notice from time to time as well! We watched a fun video they wanted me to share with you, so I will below. Enjoy! In Social Studies we are studying geography. We studied our classroom globe and have started talking about maps. Landforms and bodies of water are also discussed in this unit. I will be introducing landforms and bodies of water in our Picture Talks. I hooked them today by showing them Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. First we studied the photograph. Initially it was thought to be a volcano, but as I listened in on the talking, the kids noticed there wasn't a mountain or lava. Another student suggested it was a geyser. (I was so impressed!) So we took a little "field trip" to Yellowstone, where there is snow right now! The National Parks have webcams that are interesting to look at, so we checked in on Old Faithful. It was still pretty early in the day, and foggy, so we didn't get a great look, but we watched a YouTube video to see it erupt. We also watched the Steamboat geyser. I'll put videos below in case you need a little field trip too! Here is the link to the Yellowstone webcams. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm We read another folktale, although a different version than the typical Three Little Pigs, and learned about the desert and the beautiful state of New Mexico. We read The Three Javelinas, by Susan Lowell. This story has the same plot, but because of the different setting than the typical Three Little Pigs, the details are different. Ask me to tell you what was different and what was the same.
Have a great weekend! Miss Wolfe We had a very busy, short week! We have been working in the Really Great Reading Playground to practice what we are learning during our lessons. I love that I can see how they did on the lessons as they are graded. The children do a really great job of helping each other as they get out and put away the Chromebooks, as well as helping others if they get stuck while playing the games. This is important as I am working with small groups or individual students. As part of our observance of Native American Month, we read the modern folktale Totem Tale, A Tall Story from Alaska, by Deb Venasse. This is a story about the animals on the totem pole getting their freedom for a night but needing to get back on the pole so they are not trapped in the land in between. We will be working more with this story next week because the author put interesting verbs in bold, big print that we will talk about more next week. We also worked on strengthening our memory by trying to remember all six animals on the totem pole at the end of the story. The children needed to listen carefully to hear their names as the carvings on the totem pole might have been difficult for the children to know what animals were on the pole. We are working with one more and one less in math. We played some fun games and I quickly found out that the children are great with one more, and pretty good with one less. We worked with larger numbers, greater than ten, to challenge, and practiced writing them on white boards. We will be starting a new unit in math but will continue to work with numbers to deepen their understanding of the relationships between numbers. Today we talked about Veteran's Day almost all day! We started by studying these photographs to talk about what we noticed and wondered about. The children were so interested in these photographs and had so much to talk about!
Some of the children shared pictures and told about what they knew about their parents, grandparents and even great grandparents service. The kids asked them questions and they did a great job answering with what they knew. We made a little booklet about Veteran's Day and the different branches of the military. We listened to music for each of the branches as well as other patriotic music. During indoor recess, I overheard them playing "veterans" in housekeeping. I hope you have a great weekend! Miss Wolfe We started our day by analyzing these turtles and tortoises. We looked at how they were the same and different, and we looked for more information to find out about how tortoises are the same and different from turtles. In the United States, sea turtles are always called turtles, but turtles found on the land are sometimes called turtles and sometimes called tortoises!
In Really Great Reading, we are working on segmenting words with three sounds. We are using our fingers to indicate the beginning, middle and end sound, and using a fist to say the whole word. We talked about consonants and vowels today and identified them together in words. We read one of my all-time favorite silliest story today. We read Potato Pants, but Laurie Keller. Event though this is such a silly book about potatoes buying pants, it has a very good lesson. We started listening to the story, then stopped and made sure we understood what the problem in the story was, which is a strategy we want our readers to learn. When reading, you do not need to start and keep reading to the end of the book. Stopping to check your understanding is important! When I asked what lesson the author wanted their reader to understand they quickly responded the book is about forgiveness. We talked about making apologies and forgiving others is important, but not always easy. Ask me to tell you about Potato Pants! In math we talked about counting on one more and counting back one less. We used bigger numbers and added in using a number sentence. We will work more on this next week. We took a spelling test with 25 words today! This is not a graded test, it's used to see what the children know about spelling words and for grouping for additional work. We talked before we started about doing our best try and that they would probably not be able to spell a lot of the words, but to try and at least put the sounds down they heard. I'm so proud of how positive they were and how they stuck to it! That was a longish test! Have a great long weekend! Miss Wolfe |
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May 2023
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