Today we talked about opposites.  Ask me to tell you the other name we have for opposites.  We read a two-part poem full of opposites.  We had some parts to read together, and some just with our rows.  Enjoy!

We continued to work with retelling.  We read a really great book called Nerdy Birdy, by Aaron Reynolds.  This is another book that has several lessons in it, but we focused on including others.  The book is about a little bird who wears big glasses, has little wings, is allergic to birdseed, and loves reading and video games.  The cool birds, the eagle, the robin and the cardinal leave Nerdy Birdy out.  Ask me to retell the rest of the story!  This is another book I highly recommend!
We finished up some pictures we made using shapes.  The students added color to their pictures.  We have mostly focused on plane shapes but will be talking about solid shapes next week.  
We also watched a short video about habitats and will be talking more about different habitats in science over the next few weeks.  Ask me to name three habitats!

Have a great weekend!
​Miss Wolfe

Today we read a poem called Mop and Broom.  This cute poem is about about a mop and broom dancing around a house at night.  That does not happen where I live!  We worked with short o and the oo sound as in broom.  We wrote words that had short o and words with oo in them.  
We listened to a beautiful story by Patricia Palocco called Luba's Wren.  This is a beautiful story, based on the Fisherman and His Wife folktale, about greed and being content.  Ask me to retell the story of Luba and the Wren.
We have been checking in on Mr. President and The First Lady to see if they have any eggs yet in their nest.  We are getting very anxious!  If it would happen they don't have eggs this year, we will watch another nest, but for now we continue to check in. Today we saw Mr. President possibly, eating a furry creature.  I explained to the children that this is a wild nest, and we will see things like this as we watch the eagles over the next few months.  They seemed fine with it today but when they see a fresh fish brought and unzipped they may think it's gross at first!  I did!  We watched a video from last year when one of the eaglets got it's foot stuck in the railings on the nest.  The eaglet was rescued and returned within 24 hours.  We watched part of this video so the kids could see just how big this nest really is.  Here's the website if you would like to watch the eagles too.  They are so beautiful!  The cameras are improved even over last year, but they are having some connectivity issues.  I find if I refresh it when I get an error message, the streaming comes on.  There are two cameras with different views, and the sound is working now.
​Here's a clip of the famous rescue by Matt the tree man.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

The kids are really enjoying the warm weather!  They are so excited to go outside, even for a fire drill!
Today we read another story about the grumpy bear called Bruce.  We read Hotel Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins.  This is a sequel to Mother Bruce with the baby geese getting older, but still living with Bruce.  Bruce and the geese return from their migration to Miami only to find mice have taken over their house and turned it into a hotel.  Ask me to retell the rest of the story!
Inspired by the hotel story, we wrote about our favorite hotel or place other than home that we have stayed.  We are working on using punctuation better.  It's hard when students first start writing longer stories to remember to put in punctuation.  We talked about making sure we are reading what we write and listening to our voice for clues about punctuation.  We also worked on putting in adjectives to describe the place we stayed.
We re-read a story today based on the painting Cat and Bird, by Paul Klee.  This painting was inspired by the painting and tells the story of how the cat feels like a caged bird inside his home.  He wants the bird to use his strong beak to set him free, which he does.  We looked at other paintings that used geometric shapes, as well as the illustrations in this book, and began pictures of our own made primarily of shapes.  Instead of using stencils, we used rules to make the shapes, except for circles.  We will be working on these pictures the remainder of the week.
We started our day with this amazing photograph of a fisherman from Vietnam.  We talked about what we noticed and what we wondered.  I am constantly amazed at the thinking these little five and six year olds do make sense of the world around them.  They understood the importance of balance and what the pole was used for.  They talked about what might be in the rest of the boat.  

Enjoy the beautiful weather!
~Miss Wolfe

We had a great Valentine's party  A huge thank-you to Ms. Pike for coordinating everything for our party.  Thanks to all the parents who came in to help out as well.  The kids had a great time and enjoyed all the activities, and of course the food!  Here are a few photos from the party!  Have a nice evening!
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We started our morning with these beautiful hearts from nature.  
We worked with rhyming words today.  We read a poem and identified rhyming words in the poem, then made a list of our own of more words that rhyme.  
We visited the Valentine Store in math.  We had 20 hearts to spend, and we used ten frames to keep track of how much we spent and how much we had left to spend.  Ask me to tell you about what I bought!

The kids are really excited about Valentine's Day.  Don't forget to send in the valentines for your child to pass out if they haven't already brought them in.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We started our day with this amazing photograph.  We looked at the shape and noticed how parts of these were in groups of five.  Nature is amazing.  Ask me to tell you what this is!
We celebrated our 100th day of school today.  We are working on a 100 word book that we can use when we are fixing up our writing.  We read about centipedes and talked about how cent means 100, as in century.  We didn't count the centipedes legs in the book, but we learned about centipedes.  We did a lot of counting today, looking back 100 years ago to see what toys were like, and listened to a great story about a class and their 100 day projects.  We shared our 100 day projects today.  Here are some snaps that show what a great job our class did in creating 100 day projects.

Today we tried to squeeze in some Social Studies!  We are working really hard to get to reading, writing and math each day with these late openings and days off, so Social Studies and Science need a little attention!  We talked about jobs today.  We looked at photographs of people doing their jobs and noticed what they were doing, any special uniform or equipment they need, where they work, and we talked about why the job is important.  The children wrote about a job they might like to do when they grow up.  They did a really great job by including some of the same ideas we talked about with jobs when we studied the photographs.  Ask me to tell you what I wrote about!
In math, we worked with some of the manipulatives we will be using in our geometry unit.  We also practiced identifying numbers, and writing them, that come before or after numbers.  We worked with numbers up to 100.  
Thank-you for sending in the 100th day of school projects.  They look great!  Tomorrow the children will get a closer look at them and a chance to tell about what they did.  I'll take some photos and try and post them so you can enjoy them too!

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

Today we studied subways from around the world.  We were looking closely to find shapes in the design of the subway stations and trains.  Ask me to tell you about the shapes I found in these photographs.

Click to advance the photographs so you can get a bigger image of each of the small photographs.
We learned about adjectives today.  We know adjectives describe words that name things, nouns.  We thought of words to describe different images we looked at, such as cotton candy.  That made us wonder how cotton candy was made, so at the end of the day, we watched someone making cotton candy.  You could have heard a pin drop.  I guess it was mesmerizing.  I'm going to have to bookmark that video.  But back to adjectives now.  We used adjectives in our writing to describe something, such as our favorite fancy outfit, our favorite food, or our favorite pet.  

We are working on showing respect to adults. The children do a really great job of saying hello in the morning, using good manners, but we are having a lot of interrupting and trying to correct adults when maybe it wasn't something that needed to be corrected, but instead, something they needed to learn or think about in a different way.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We finished our health unit about nutrition today.  We talked about how we know if foods are healthy and why it's important to eat mostly healthy foods.  We talked about sometimes food, such as cookies or cakes.  We watched a short video about Captain Vegetable we'd like to share with you.  (It's my favorite so we watched it twice!)  Ask me to name some healthy choices and some sometimes food.

We visited with Mrs. Kanter today.  She talked to the children about "Stop, Think and Do."  Ask me to tell you about how that helps to make good choices.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe