Ask Me About Monday, February 1, 2016

Welcome back!  I hope everyone survived our blizzard!  We had a couple little friends who had never played in snow before, so we had been hoping for some snow for them, so I hope they had a great time in the snow!  I hope the Just For Kids page was helpful in keeping your little ones entertained when it was too bad to go out!  It's good to get back into our school routine!
We started our second semester today.  Our rules and routines have not changed, but just as children grow, the expectations of their behavior and responsibilities also changes.  We talked about being more responsible in our routines and following directions, which means I will not be repeating directions and giving reminders for things they know to do like signing-in each day and raising their hand to talk instead of blurting things out.  
We also have a slightly different room design.  We put two tables together to make a bigger meeting table for some of our groups, especially in math, where I need more space for more kids to be working with me.  I also let children choose where their "home base" will be, but made it flexible so they can move when they need more space or to work more on their own, especially during Writing Workshop.  I reserved the right to move friends who are too chatty or do not work well together!  
Today we wrote about our blizzard and our adventures in the snow.  The children were showing their best work, and we will use this writing piece to analyze and choose a writing goal.  
Our copier is broken, so I will try and send home a letter tomorrow with names for valentines and information about making a valentine box or bag at home.
In math we played a fun game with a big 120 chart.  We rolled dice to find a number, then roll a die that told us to add ten, subtract ten, add one or subtract one.  We were learning about number neighbors!  It was tricky at first, but this will be a fun game to play to practice learning more about number relationships.

It was great seeing so many happy faces come through the door this morning!
​Juliet