We studied this  photograph this morning.  We talked about the job of the window washers.  We noticed and wondered about many things in this photograph.  We really enjoyed seeing the reflection of the clouds.  Not many of us would want to do this job unless we made a lot of money doing it!  We talked about other jobs today.  We looked at photographs of different jobs and talked about why this job was important, what you would do on the job, and where you would work.  Later in the day, the children wrote about what job they think right now they would like to have when they grow up.  They know they will probably have lots of different ideas of what they would like to do as they grow up, but there are those people who knew very early in life what they wanted to be.  We read earlier in the week about Ronald McNair who knew early on he wanted to fly.  Today, we read about another person who wanted to fly, and boy did he ever fly!  We visited the great state of Ohio and read about Neil Armstrong.  We read One Giant Leap, by Don Brown and learned about how from the age of two Armstrong was interested in flight.  Ask me to tell you about Neil Armstrong and to tell you where he is from in Ohio.  I'd like to apologize now for teaching them the OH - IO chant.  I was sorry about 30 seconds after I started it!
We also reviewed our health topic of eating a healthy diet.  I introduced them to Captain Vegetable.  You may need to show them this as a distraction to the OH-IO chant...

We know it's important to eat a healthy diet of colorful foods.  We used My Plate to sort foods into the different food groups.  Ask me to tell you foods that go in each group.

We continued to work with decomposition and representing them with number bonds in math.  We tried to show different ways to decompose a number.  We used the Rekenreks to show different numbers, as well as ten frames.  
Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We continued working with number bonds in math.  The children are very good at decomposing numbers1  In the homework section of our website, you will find a couple new math games.  One of the games is a decomposition game that is a lot of fun for the kids with fuzz bugs! 
We met with our Bear Cub Buddies today.  We talked about empathy and re-read one of our favorite books called I Walk With Vanessa, by the husband and wife team called Kerascoët.  This wordless picture book shows how important it is for all of us to be aware of others and what is happening with them.  This book is about a young girl who moves to a new school and is confronted by a bully.  One young girl witnesses this and thinks about how she can help this girl.  Ask me to tell you what she does and how the story ends.  We talked about how this girl showed she was empathetic and what she chose to do because of her feelings.  We thought about a time we were empathetic and made bubbles to fill in the word kind in our hallway with the other kindergartens and third grade.  It looks great, and shares little stories of how we are focused on learning to be empathetic.
We read a book set in West Virginia today for our Read the U.S.A. book.  The book we read was Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver.  This is a special state for me because my mother's family, as well as my mother, are from West Virginia.  The pictures in the book are really cute because they are like a quilt, but they show things you would see in a trip through West Virginia.  Be sure to read the postcard for a fun fact about where this song was written!
Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

Today we began talking about goods and services.  We studied this photograph of woman selling food.  We compared it to our stores, and also to Farmer's Markets.  We watched a short video that explained goods, services, producers and consumers.  We will continue to talk about these words to get a better understanding of them!  
In math we worked with decomposing numbers up to five.  I introduced number bonds, which are when we break apart a number into two or more parts.  I sent home a paper today that gives you more information about what we will be studying in math for the next five days.  
In reading, we began a new unit called "Stories Have Messages."  We will be identifying the central message and finding text evidence to support it.  We read a short story called All Together Now!  Ask me to retell this short story to you.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We are studying life in the past, present and future.  We studied this photographs of some schools from the past.  We talked about what we noticed in the classroom and how it is different from our classroom.  Ask me to tell you about what I noticed and what I learned.
In math, we continue to compare sets of objects.  We are talking about more, less, fewer, as well as how many more or fewer as we dig deeper into the concepts.  We talked about a strategy we can use when we are compare actual objects.  The children need to be careful to line up the objects so they can be easily compared.  We are also looking at groups of items and finding clusters of items that we don't need to count because we know how many are there without counting.  There are a few math games online the children played to help reinforce that concept.  Please check out our Homework page on the website, or go to our Google classroom to have your child play those games at home.​
We continued our study of Mo Willems books.  We read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.  We noticed how the words in the talking bubbles are written in different ways to cue the reader to read them either louder, softer, or with more expression.  We wrote our own talking bubbles to share something else The Pigeon might demand.  We used all upper case letters and made them bold, with yellow crayon for emphasis.  
We will continue to read Mo Willems books next week!

Don't forget, Monday is the 100th day of school.  If you choose to have your child do a project, they can bring it in on Monday.  I sent the directions for the project home last week but will send it again today.  This is optional!  I know there is a lot going on right now!
Have a great weekend!
Miss Wolfe

Today in math, we worked on organizing a collection into rows to compare quantities to determine which group had more.  The children do a great job of counting and answering, but some children are still working on accurately drawing a set that has one more.  We worked a little deeper into this concept to determine how many more one group had than the other.  The children need to listen carefully to the language of math and think before responding to be sure they are answering the question that was asked.
In reading, we read a short story about a character that goes to Mars.  We read a book about Mars so we had a better understanding of what Mars is like so we could write an opinion about whether we would like to live on Mars or on Earth.  We talked about starting our piece with our opinion, then adding reasons to support our opinion.
We also talked about germs and staying healthy.  We focused on sneezing into our sleeve and reviewed how important it is to wash our hands.  We are also working very hard to stop licking our hands or putting things in our mouth.  We watched a funny, older video about sneezing.  You might get a chuckle out of it too!

We enjoyed seeing our friends' favorite books today.  Tomorrow is Read at the Bells Mill Beach Day.  The children can bring in a beach towel to read classroom books on tomorrow.

We are working as a class on making better transitions between activities.  We have had a lot of leisurely transitions where children are finding distractions, walking slowly or just standing instead of going to the carpet for the next part of a lesson.  

Have a great evening!
​Miss Wolfe

Day Two of our Read-a-Thon was very exciting with the children bringing a stuffie to school to read to during D.E.A.R. time. Tomorrow the children can bring their favorite book in to read during D.E.A.R. time.

Today we worked with counting sets and making a set with one less.  We are also practicing counting to 100 in preparation for the 100th Day of School!  We exercised with Jack Hartman to practice counting to 100.  Your child can practice at home too!  Here's one of the videos we practice with at school.

In reading, we are continuing to work on retelling key events from the beginning, middle and end of stories.  Ask me to retell The Thank-You Book, by Mo Willems.  This is the last book in the Piggie and Elephant series that Mo Willems wrote.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We started our Read-a-Thon today!  We had D.E.A.R. time today and read for ten minutes.  During this time, the children are allowed to choose their books.  We will do this every day for the next two weeks as part of our Read-a-Thon.  We will be focusing on Mo Willems' Piggie and Elephant books during the Read-a-Thon.  We practiced drawing Piggie and Elephant today.  We watched a video that showed Mo Willems drawing Piggie.  I tried, the best I could, to show them how to draw Elephant.  Here's a video that shows Mo demonstrating how to draw Piggie's face.

We also reviewed counting syllables in words.  The kids have fun using their index fingers to clap out the number of syllables in words.  We also reviewed reading consonant, vowel, consonant words.  In math, we reviewed using the words more and fewer to describes sets of objects.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe