Today we worked thought about whether animal parents. were more alike or different from human parents.  The class was split evenly on what they thought, but we looked at some pictures and thought about the things parents do in caring for their young, and we found many similarities.  We listened to the music of You'll Be in My Heart, and identified some of the things mentioned in the songs that parents do, then found those things in the pictures we studied.  Ask me to tell you about these pictures.  

It's true, I shed a tear every year when I watch this.  It may be the You'll Be in My Heart song I play as we listen that does that.  Enjoy.

We played a Fill the Caterpillar game today.  We used triangle, hexagons and rhombuses to fill hexagonal shapes connected to make a caterpillar.  The students got a better understanding of how the shapes go together and which shapes were better to use in certain places.  

We enjoyed the 100 Day projects.  Several students were concerned they didn't bring one in today and want to bring it in another day.  That is absolutely fine, and please understand this is not graded and is optional like all our homework.  It was really interesting to see how many different ways students counted their 100 things and how they displayed them.  Thank-you for taking the time to help your children with this project!

Have a nice evening!
Juliet
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Today we read a poem about ducks by Mary Ann Hoberman.  The poem is about how ducks are lucky.  Ask me why Mary Ann Hoberman thinks ducks are lucky.  We also looked at words in the poems with short u and short i sounds.  We made a list of other words that have a short or i sound in them.
In Writing Workshop we talked about the author Rosemary Wells.  We are looking at her books and the topics she chose to write about.  We know authors think about their audience as they choose topics and characters.  We listened to the story Mama, Don't Go.  We made many text-to-self connections in this story because it was about not wanting to be away from mom at the beginning of the school year.  We talked about other first time events that we had strong feelings about and shared them with our writing partner.  Tomorrow we will begin our stories.
Have a nice evening!
Juliet
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A huge thank-you to Mrs. Pashkoff, Mrs. Menick, and all the parents who volunteered to help with games and bring in treats for the class Valentine party.  I'm sorry I couldn't stay for the whole party, but I had a meeting I had to attend, but I heard the children had a lot of fun.  Mrs. Pashkoff came in early and set up the room.  She carried in a lot of things to prepare our room on a very frigid day!  The room looked great and the kids had a great time.
Today was the 100th day of school.  We had only a few projects come in, and I got an e-mail last night which explained that I had put the wrong date in our update last week.  So we will celebrate the 100th day next Monday.  
Today we studied pictures to find out what concept the pictures were showing.  

Ask me to share the 100th day poem with you and show you the pairs of rhyming words.  Challenge me to think of more words that rhyme!
We had a TASS, Thinking and Academic Success Skill, lesson today about best effort.  Ask me to tell you what I learned about best effort and what I can do to show my best effort.  We watched a great video about best effort.  Check it out! 

We read a short book called A Little Bit of Omph, by Barney Saltzman.  Ask me to tell you about omph!  Be sure to look at the flower picture your child is bringing home to see which one has more omph!
We finished the day talking about shapes in artwork.  Over the next few days we will be making some artwork with shapes!

Have a nice evening!
​Juliet

Today we continued studying shapes.  Today we took a virtual tour of subway stations around the world to look for shapes.  We all want to go on a trip now!  Ask me to tell you about the shapes I see in these photographs!

We practiced counting large groups of objects today.  What better thing to count than jewelry!  We used cups to collect groups of tens, then counted on by ones.  The 100th Day of School is coming up next week, and we look forward to see some 100 Day projects!  

If your child tells you they visited the Health Room today, they did!  We had vision and hearing testing today.  

Have a nice evening!
Juliet
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We got right to work today with our late opening!  The children went to the library and listened to a Valentine's Day story.  They learned how to cut out a heart and are very happy to be bringing it home to show you..  Mrs. Floyd complimented them on how well they tried, even though cutting out a heart can be tricky!
We studied an interesting picture today and searched for geometric shapes.  We had a lot to choose from!  Ask me to name some of the shapes in this photograph!
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We will be learning about plane and solid shapes over the next few weeks.  Today we talked about the attributes of several plane shapes and compared them to each other.
We listened to a story today about a little squirrel who was learning to jump from branch to branch.  The story is written by a Maryland author named Penny L. Hunt and is titled Little White Squirrel's Secret.  The little white squirrel in the story keeps falling from the tree as he tries to learn to jump, and other animals laugh at him.  His father takes him to a special place to practice.  Ask me to tell you about the special place and why it was good for the little white squirrel.  This story had several lessons readers can learn from listening to the story.  Ask me to tell you about the story and what I learned.  We know our classroom, and our school, is a special place where we can make mistakes as we learn.
Have a nice evening!
Juliet
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Today we took a math test in the computer lab. The children worked hard and had a good time I think!  This test does not count toward their grades at school.  It is a test designed to give us a better picture of where the student is in their understanding of math.  Depending on the child's performance, it gets harder as they get questions correct and goes into topics that we do not cover in kindergarten.  This test is not required by the county for kindergarten until the end of the year, but we took it now and will take it again at the end of the year.  It's good for the children to have the experience of taking this type of test because it asks questions in different ways and has different ways the children need to respond.  

We also had a visit from Mrs. Kanter, our school counselor.  She talked about making and keeping friends with the children.  We had a quick class meeting later in the day to check up on how things are going at recess and during lunch.  A few children said they had trouble finding friends to play with during recess.  We talked about meeting at the door when they were leaving the school or planning ahead of time where to meet outside.  We also talked about the things they can do when they have to play outside on the blacktop instead of on the playgrounds.  The children shared a lot of great ideas.  Ask me to tell you about what I do at recess.

Have a nice evening!
​Juliet

We started our day with an assembly!  We watched a professional jump roper.  He did amazing tricks!  Here's s short video that shows some of the performance.  

(I'm having lots of problems right now since upgrading my computer over our blizzard days.  It's taken a couple hours for me to even get videos off my camera now, so once I get this taken care of, I'll try and repost!)

​Today we happened to be learning about another part of our academic success skill for this marking period  We discussed the word challenge.  We came up with a definition, then checked ours with Sesame Street.  Here's a clip with Elmo and Amy Poehler talking about the word challenge.
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If you are noticing your child patting their head and rubbing their stomach a lot today, now you know why!  We wrote about a challenge we are setting for ourselves.
​Today we counted the toothbrushes we collected for Drew, the little boy who was on Facebook who wanted to collect toothbrushes for children in orphanages who were having to share toothbrushes.  We collected 51 toothbrushes.  We wrote Drew a letter and took a class picture to send to him..  Thank-you to everyone who helped with this project! 

Have a great weekend!
​Juliet

Today we read a poem called The Impatient Snowman.  We discussed the word impatient and thought of examples when we feel impatient.  Then we read the poem and discussed whether we thought the snowman was really impatient or not.  We used clues from the poem and what we know about weather and snow to decide.  Ask me to tell you about the impatient snowman.  We also looked for short u words in the poem and thought of other words with short u.  
This marking period the focus of our academic success skill is on effort, motivation and persistence.  Today we began talking about persistence.  Ask me to tell you about the word persistence.  

We thought of examples of times when we were persistent and shared them with the class.  Then we watched a beautiful video of a little girl and her mother who are very persistent.  Ask me to tell you about what this little family did that shows they are persistent.  

In math today, we played a Hot Potato game.  We used our ten frames to show different ways to make seven.  We passed the hot potato around the carpet and when it stopped, we shared one way to make seven.  Then we put our ten frame in the middle and anyone who had the same way needed to think fluently and find another way to show seven.  It was a lot of fun, but now we all want baked potatoes for dinner.  Ask me to tell you two ways to show seven.
Tomorrow will be the last day we are collecting toothbrushes for children in need.  Thank-you to everyone who encouraged their child to buy a toothbrush for a child in need.  We will be sending a letter to the little boy who thought of this project along with the toothbrushes.

Have a nice evening!
​Juliet

Today we learned about emergencies.  Ask me to sing you the 9-1-1 song!  Here are the words since the copier still was under the weather this morning!

Sung to the tune of "Bingo"
There's a number you can call
when you need to get help fast!
You call 9-1-1-
You call 9-1-1-
You call 9-1-1-
There's someone there to help you!

We also talked about what is an emergency when you would call 9-1-1 and what is not an emergency.  We looked at a phone keypad and some of the kids practiced finding the 9 and 1's quickly.  We made pretend calls and practiced talking to the operator.  The children did a great job coming up with their own emergency and even locations when they couldn't remember their own address.  We talked about the importance of learning our address and phone number, speaking to be understood on the phone, and staying calm.  We know this was practice, just like a fire drill and an emergency at our home may not ever happen, but we know what to do in case there is one!  Ask me to tell you my full address and phone number.  If your child doesn't know it, please practice.  Over the next couple weeks I will be checking to see if your child can tell me their address and phone number.  

Today we also worked with one of our Word Bird strategies to learn and use new vocabulary.  We talked about the word exchange.  Ask me to tell you about the word exchange.  We thought of the trade to use as a word that means the same as exchange.  We thought of examples of when you exchange something.  FYI, it seems a lot of families return things at Target!  We talked about how returning something is different than exchanging.  Of course then we talked about something very important we will be exchanging in a couple weeks.  We talked about valentines and what we will be doing with them.  I sent home a letter today asking you to help your child address valentines to their classmates.  The class list is on the letter.  I also need you to help your child create a valentine box or bag.  With so many days off, we just don't have the time to do it at school!  Thanks for your help!
Here's another awesome clip from Sesame Street that we used in our discussion of the word exchange.  Enjoy!

Have a wonderful, relaxing evening!
​Juliet

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