Ask Me About Thursday, September 11, 2014

Busy, loud day today!  We are really working on trying to use quieter voices while working in stations, in our specials such as Art, and at lunch.  I know it's an adjustment from preschool because the children were often playing with the same types of activities but didn't have small group work going on so it's important they learn to use quieter voices and to focus more on the learning and not just "playing." 
Because play is important, I do give the children time almost every day to play as well, which usually is not a time that has to be more quiet.  It's just an adjustment, but it was really loud today.  If I didn't know better, I'd think a snowstorm was coming because those days are often like the kind of day we had today.  But, I did get more of our reading testing done, and I'm going to try and complete most of it tomorrow so I can start pulling some reading groups next week.  Woo hoooo!

We learned about analyzing today.  We talked about noticing what is the same and what is different.  We played a game called Guess My Rule where I call kids out to stand up who have something that is the same about them.  We either have mind readers in here or some very good future detectives because they did a great job identifying my rule.  We also read a book called Birdwingfeather which had paintings of birds as well as smaller paintings that zoomed in on different attributes of the painting.  We are beginning a weather unit in science.  We read The Rain Came Down, by David Shannon.  We learned about labeling pictures.  We talked about stretching out the word and writing the sounds heard to label things in pictures.  Today the children sketched a picture of their favorite part of the story, then labeled at least five things in the picture.  Ask me to tell you about my picture and the story.

We played Hot Potato to practice names.  This is always BIG fun!  I'm very happy to see that the children are learning the names of their classmates so quickly!

Enjoy the evening!
Juliet