Happy New Year!
Winter Theme
We welcomed back the kids with our winter theme this week. We have created and are adding to our KWL chart about winter. The children made a list of what they KNOW about winter, what they WANT to know about winter, and what they have LEARNED about winter. We have been reading books with winter ideas, characters, and signs of winter all week. Before we read the stories we look at the questions we had about winter and think about them during the story. After we read the stories we write on the chart to show what we have learned about winter. The students also have been experimenting with freezing water. They made predictions about what would happen to a jar of water when placed in the freezer. On Monday we will look at the jars and and talk about how our predictions matched up. The children also predicted how long it will take to freeze water.
The children are writing what they know and are learning about winter in their journals. Some are working on story dictation while others are working on labeling their pictures.
We have shared some poems and chants about winter as well. The children really enjoyed the poem 5 Little Snowmen, which allowed the children to work on subtracting skills when the snow melted the snowmen away. When they first heard the poem we orally said 5-1+=4, but on the second time around we wrote on the white board 5-2=3 so they could see different ways to subtract from 5.
Morning Message
The class has been working on syllables in the morning meeting. It has been a busy time in the morning as we target skills such as beginning sounds, ending sounds, missing words, popcorn words, syllables, counting letters in their names, spelling names out loud, and tracking the words in the message. They have taken over the Blast Off game to spell sight words and have decided they will pretend they are popcorn pieces instead of a rocketship and say, "POP!" at the end of the word instead of Blast Off.
Now the game goes as follows: student: If they see a popcorn word they say, "POP!" The class gets down low and says, "What word do you see?" Student: "and." The class then says each letter a-n-d, while slowly rising up. When they reach the end of the word everyone jumps and says, "POP!" Try this game at home with a variety of sight words. Although in their individual reading groups they will identify a variety of sight words at their own pace, in the morning meeting we have identified "and, is" as the popcorn words of this week.
Fine Motor Center
Everyone participated in sewing this week. Sewing is a great way to strengthen hand muscles which reinforces good handwriting skills.
Language Arts Center
Everyone worked on their rhyming skills this week in the language arts center. They had a variety of games that were leveled according to their expertise and they challenged each other to complete game boards and memory games. Rhyming is a great way to reinforce phonics skills and assist with reading. Rhyming can be done anytime and anywhere. Nonsense words are accepted and encouraged! Try rhyming games at home to build literacy skills.
Art Center
Incorporating math and fine motor skills into the art center turned into a terrific snowman activity this week. The children counted how many letters are in their first name and added one to that number. Next they cut out the correlating number of circles to make a snowman. They drew a face on the top circle and wrote one letter of their first name in each of their circles. We are creating a graph of how many letters are in each persons name and we will compare using more, less, and equal to next week during circle time.
Math Center
Understanding patterns is a basic skill needed in Math to understand why things work together. Patterns help solve problems and can be found everywhere in designs, shapes and groups of numbers. Helping a child to notice patterns in his or her world is an important skill to learn and fun to work on together.
When working together creating patterns, children will here the words as copy, repeat, create, and extend. Children should know that the core of a pattern should repeat three times to be a complete pattern. Children should be able to repeat and extend a pattern and extend the patterns others have started. 
Check out the scarves hanging in the classroom where you will see AB, AAB, ABB, ABBA, and ABC patterns!Reading Groups
We have really gotten a routine down for working in small and individual reading groups in the morning and during small group/theme time. The children are working on sight word books, cvc (consonant vowel consonant) books, and predictable text. They are working on fluency when reading. They are chopping up words to hear the sounds then squishing them back together to figure the word out. Everyone works at their own pace and at their own level. Some children are working on letter identification while others are reading and answering comprehension questions.
Third Grade Reading Buddies
Our third grade reading buddies came back this week on Thursday and shared lots of books with us! It is so nice to have them in our classroom and to share this time with them.
Outside Fun
A Peek Ahead
Next week we have language arts center, math, independent, and art centers. We will continue our study of winter and incorporate Polar animals into the theme next week. We will be continuing to work on syllables, individualized reading skills, and math skills.
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