Today we had a busy day!  We worked with animal picture cards to sort animals by external features.  We had a visit from our third grade buddies and shared some of our writing.  Our third graders left a little note for us with a compliment or something that we should continue doing in our writing.  Our third graders brought stories they wrote too!  It was fun to listen to their stories and see that they wrote them on the computer.  Then we listened to a very silly story called Do Not Open This Book, by Michaela Muntean, about a pig who was writing a story.  Ask me to tell you about this very funny book!
We also watched a video clip to identify the main idea of a very special story.  Ask me to tell you what the main idea is, and what this family does to show that they are persistent.  

We played in the afternoon.  We have changed our housekeeping area to a workshop.  We also enjoyed sorting animals, food into food groups, building, making cards, and playing games.  

Today we  began using paper and pencil for our handwriting practice.  You may also notice we have begun to use writing lines with a baseline, midline and headline. Everyone did such a great job of working neatly.  We also worked with Word Bird Vocabulary Strategies.  We worked mostly with using clues from the text and/or illustrations and listening for a familiar part of the word.  We know it's important to think about the words and meaning of the text we are reading, so when we come to an unknown word, we need to go back, reread and use these strategies to figure out the meaning of the word.  We read The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza, by Philomen Sturges.  Ask me to tell the story and if I think the Little Red Hen should have shared her pizza with the dog, cat and duck.  
Today we also reviewed and practiced our Five Finger Retell.  The Five Finger Retell can be found on our Reading page.
We also took a quick test to see how far we can go in writing numbers to 100!  This will help us know what we need to practice.  It's important for students to be fluent reading and writing the numbers to 100, just like fluency is important in reading and writing.  We don't want to get bogged down thinking about how to read or write the numbers; we need to know them just like that!  
I sent home a flyer today about a project for the 100th Day of school, which will be Thursday, February 5 if we don't get anymore snow days!!!  
I have the envelopes for class pictures.  If you sent one in, I will keep it until we get another date for the class picture.  But until then, I have some quick pictures I took of kids today as they were practicing the Five Finger Retell with a partner.  Enjoy!
Stay warm!
Juliet

Today we talked more about story settings.  We looked at a sweet story called Red Hat, by Lita Judge.  This book is nearly wordless, with only sounds made by the animals or their actions.  We talked about the setting and the clues that helped us identify the setting. 
We also talked about taking care of our SELF.  SELF stands for sleep, exercise, leisure and food.  We know these four things are important to know about and do to take care of ourselves.  This week we are focusing on food.  Today we talked about vegetables.  We brainstormed a list of vegetables, and learned about the word brainstorm. We watched a short video about Captain Vegetable, one of Sesame Street's finest productions ever if you ask me!  Then we made our own vegetable people.  This class knows a lot about vegetables!  Ask me to name five vegetables!
Enjoy learning about Captain Vegetable and the word brainstorm. 

Enjoy the evening!
Juliet

Today we learned more about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream.  We talked about the dream he had, and how it was a dream about a big problem.  We thought about other big problems in our world.  I am always surprised at what these little people say, and I'm so impressed at what they know.  I can tell these children are so lucky to be in homes where their family talks to them!  We heard about big problems such as The Cold War, wars where people hurt each other instead of using words to solve their problems, the under-inflated football problem, and the fact that the United States still has not had a woman president.  A few other, more personal problems were also shared, such as ants in the kitchen and dropping a glass an the floor, which also for five and six year olds are also very big problems. I will be scanning their writing and putting it on our website homepage in the next couple days so you can also see some of the big problems these little people are thinking about.
Today we also talked more about revision.  I showed a picture of a red velvet cake with frosting I made for a birthday.  As I was "bragging" about this birthday cake, it was soon noted that this did not look very much like a birthday cake.  One student suggested it was not made with love like birthday cakes.  HMPH.  Actually, I didn't make the cake at all, I got the picture off Google.  Together, we revised the cake so it made more sense as a birthday cake.  We added decorations, like those bumpy things on the edge of the cake, a big heart in the middle, sprinkles, candles, and the age of the recipient in the middle of the heart. Then the students reread a story they wrote last week and added more details and events to their audience would understand their story better.  Some students, worked on adding details to their illustrations as well.  
We used cubes to show different sculptures we could make out of just six cubes.  Then, they were to see if they could find a match of the same sculpture of someone else in the class.  The only rule was they had to do it without talking.  We started the game over five times because each time, within the first five seconds, someone talked.  This was also an exercise in self-control.  Obviously we need a little work in that area!  We will be doing more work with showing numbers in different ways over the next couple weeks!
Today I noticed so much kind behavior.  The kids in this class don't hesitate to help each other when they drop their box of crayons, need help tying their shoe, or having a compliment for a friend.  Thank-you so much for sending me such caring, polite little friends.  They are such fun to be around!
Juliet  

What a beautiful, snowy day!  We enjoyed watching the snow today.  
Today we worked more on our Box City.  We revised our buildings.  We talked about what it means to revise, so we did a lot of adding to, taking away and moving around on our buildings.  We were adding more details to the buildings to make them look more like real buildings that would tell the story of our city.  We will be revising in Writing Workshop too, so this was a great review of what it means to revise.
We also watched two short film clips about Martin Luther King, Jr.  We will continue our discussion of him and of what it means to be peaceful tomorrow.  For now, I'll share one of the clips the kids watched today.  

Enjoy the evening!  
Juliet

We had a very busy day working hard to do some testing in math, as well as in reading.  We had a great afternoon with our third grade Bear Cub Buddies.  We worked on creating buildings for a community we will be assembling.  We used boxes, paper and crayons to make buildings.  This was a really great time to work more closely with third graders and get to know them better.  
We read more about mealworms.  We learned about the three body parts of insects.  Ask me to tell you one of the body parts!  We studied another interesting insect this morning.  Take a look and see what you notice?  Does this remind you of anything?  We had a really great discussion about this insect.

Busy, short day once again.  We had a Word Wall spelling check-up today.  I'll share the results in the report card, but right now it looks like the children are doing a good job spelling most of the words introduced.  I will send home a list of the words we have introduced along with ideas for practicing the words they still need to work on so they can read and spell them automatically.  
We worked with our mealworms once again.  We have quite a few who have entered the pupa stage, and so we looked at them closely today along with the skin many of them have shed.  We learned some new words today.  Ask me about the words molt, exoskeleton, larva, and pupa.  We can even act out these words!  
We watched a cool video that shows us what we missed when these mealworms molted!  

The craziness of this week, with late openings, is making me forgetful.  I totally forgot the Read to Me, Talk to Me books, so tomorrow we'll pick new books. Sorry for the inconvenience!  

Have a great evening!
Juliet

Today we continued our discussion about main idea.  We read the book Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon, by Patty Lovell.  This book is about a little girl who has some unique physical features.  Her grandma teaches her to stand tall and be proud, which she does when she is confronted by a child who teases her.  Ask me about Molly Lou Melon!  This is a great book with an important message about being proud of who you are and of what makes you unique!  We read the book, but here is a six minute video of the book.  This is a great book with many opportunities for a good family discussion.  Enjoy!

We studied our mealworms closer today.  We used hand lenses and actually held the mealworms so we could feel what they were like.  Some of our mealworms have entered the pupa stage and we will be looking at those tomorrow to compare them to those still in the larva stage.  Ask me about the mealworms!  I'll add some photographs to our Science page in the next day or two that show the children with the mealworms.  
We also learned about song about the life cycle of the butterfly.  We began our day by studying a photograph of a Jewel Caterpillar.  Ask me what word describes the skin of the caterpillar.  Here's a look at an amazing creature, this one found in Cancun, Mexico.  

Have a great evening!
Juliet