We started our day with an activity that focuses on executive functioning skills.  We worked on working memory and following directions.  We had a scavenger hunt with four items the children needed to find items that fit the directions.  I gave the directions twice, then gave the children time to hunt for the items.  I gave the directions one last time after most had returned just to give another chance to children who were not able to remember the all the items.  
We listened to a classic story by Virginia Lee Burton called The LIttle House.  We were looking at how humans change the Earth, but also noticed the change in seasons.  We studied illustrations from the story to see how humans changed the land around the little house until it was unrecognizable.  The children chose to draw a picture to show the little house either in the country or how she looked when the city grew up around her.  We looked at the different lines in the two settings to help the children draw curved lines in the country, and mostly straight lines in the city.  Below are illustrations from the book, in sequence, that show the changes that happened.  Ask me to tell you about the changes I noticed.

If you would like to enjoy the story, The LIttle House, by Virginia Lee Burton, I have posted it below.

In math, we did a little final testing to write numbers that were more or less, just using the numbers, not sets.  We also wrote the numbers from 1-10, and also 10 - 20 to see how the children are doing with writing two digits numbers in order.  They did a great job!  The children need to be able to write the numbers with no reversals of the numeral.  
In the afternoon, we listened to The Map Book, by Sarah Fanelli.  This is a book filled with unique maps that appear to be drawn by a child.  Then, the children made their own maps.  They needed to included a landform, a body of water, a human-made feature and a natural feature.  The really enjoyed making and sharing their maps!  I was so excited to see almost everyone anxious to share their map!

I hope you enjoy the weekend!
​Miss Wolfe

We are finishing up our testing!  The kids are doing great.  We learned about bodies of water.  We stopped along the way as we were learning and doodled what we were learning about.  Ask me to show you my doodles about bodies of water.  We will be doing more doodling and I will be sending out an e-mail soon about it, but we do it to help remember, stay engaged, and to share with others.  My rules for doodling are that you use just one color unless told, it's not a picture just little drawings with boxes around them, and we sometimes add words to learn content vocabulary.  We have done this before with read alouds that didn't have pictures, and it seems to really keep the kids engaged.  
We took a couple breaks from doing worksheets, testing and writing.  We tried to guess the answers to some riddles.  The kids were very literal!  I had to suggest to them when to laugh and explain why it was supposed to be funny.  We also did an activity we have done before to practice strengthening our working memory.  We drew a big tic-tac-toe on the back of a used paper to organize what we were about to look at.  I showed them a screen with a tic-tac-toe and nine pictures, seen below.  We studied the screen for about ten seconds, then they had to draw what they remembered.  I suggested they think about how the pictures were related or grouped.  I suggested they repeat what was in each row aloud.  These are some strategies they can use when trying to remember things.  We will play this quick game periodically to continue to work on strengthening their memory.  I also let them know they often they might hear people say they don't have a good memory, but you can do things to make your memory better, and this game is just one of the ways we will work on strengthening our working memory.

I'm hoping to finish testing tomorrow!  Thursday I'd like to do a quick art activity with them to celebrate the end of the semester and doing a great job on their reading and math tests!
Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We started this week off by organizing our papers from the pick-up on Friday.  We worked more with the u sound.  We wrote some two letter words.  First, we quietly pounded the syllables.  We pounded with the opposite hand that we write with, then tapped out the sounds with our fingers while we wrote them down.  We also wrote two sentences, with a focus on putting spaces between words.  Again, we used the hand opposite our writing hand to put a finger space between words.  I noticed in the children's writing they were forgetting to use spaces again.  Now that they are writing more, they are working a little quicker and independently, and that may lead to forgetting some of the things we have done together.  We will be focusing on putting spaces between words again, as well as using the three line paper with the dotted line in the middle.  We are writing the letters more carefully to print smaller and put the letters in the correct space on the lines.  We use the house to remind the children where the lines should be, so we talk about the downstairs, upstairs and the basement.

We will continue to work work through testing this week.  Tomorrow we will be doing more reading testing which is one on one testing in a breakout room, and math testing whole group.  We got a lot of testing done today because the children worked really well on their own!

Have a nice vening!
​Miss Wolfe

Today we worked with sequence in texts.  We reread a text about what mother bears teach their cubs.  The children were to fold a paper into fourths and draw pictures to show what happened first, next and last.  We also worked with /ch/ .  We practiced looking for ch in words.  It is important for readers to see the ch and know that the sound may be /ch/, /k/ or /sh/.  Most of the time it will be /ch/ like in cheese, so that is what we are working with now.  We also did a paper to sort /ch/ and /c/ words.  
In math, we worked with using the words more, less and fewer.  The children need to be able to communicate about comparing groups using these words.  They need to understand what is being asked when they are used in questions.  When talking about fewer, the children need to thing about which group doesn't have as many.  We will continue to practice working with these words.
We tried to have reading groups in the morning, and I was able to get to two which is what is reasonable given the time we have online.  Wednesdays I try and have more groups.  The children did pretty well doing the work I assigned that you printed out.  I will try and get papers sent for each week to you earlier so you have time to print them out.  
Have a great evening!
​Miss Wolfe