Week of January 10-14

During the morning free choice time, some of the children were busy creating a beautiful winter mural of things they like to do in the winter and winter weather.  It is hanging in the hallway.  Take a look at it when you come in the school and ask what your child drew.  Or what their favorite thing to do in winter is.

Our winter theme continued this week with fun outside as well as inside.  The children continued to ask questions about how to build things in the snow and get answers by jumping right in it!  Thanks Mother Nature for the snow this week:)

The morning meeting continues to be a time of great learning for the children.  We have incorporated so much differentiated learning to meet all the students individual needs.  They are practicing listening skills, writing, reading, tracking words, beginning and ending letter sounds, popcorn words, one to one correspondence, weather words, and so much more.

Mr. Hunter came to visit the JK classroom this week for music class.  The children were so happy to have him visit the room and he was so engaging as always!

In the Fine Motor center children practiced writing letters, numbers, and words in shaving cream.  Shaving cream actvities are very sensory rich and engaging for the children.

In the Language Arts center, children worked on a sequencing activity.  We have been reading and sharing ideas of how to build things in the snow so this Language Arts activity tied nicely into our theme by having the children put pictures in chronological order.  First you roll the snowballs.  Second you stack them, and third you decorate him.

In the Math center the children were introduced to a new game called grab and count.  This is an activity that you can do anywhere with the children.  You need a container of manipulatives (buttons, cubes, beans, etc.).  Each person estimates how many of the objects he or she can pick up with one hand.  Then each person grabs some of the manipulatives.  Count out your objects.  See how close your were to your estimation.  Then you can you can make addition and subtraction problems with your objects, or compare more and less.  These were all things the children did with their partners in the math center this week.

During small groups this week, the children worked on finding popcorn words in books and around the room.  Popcorn words have been introduced during the morning meeting, we play "POP" to spell them out during circle time, say the "Popcorn Word of the Day" poem, and hunt around the room to find them in the posters and charts hanging everywhere.  Also in small groups and during free choice, we have been working on our second semester individual assessments. 


In small groups the children also explored melting ice from their experiment last week and then they explored snow indoors.  They scooped and measured, patted, and shaped the snow.  They talked about what happens to snow in the warm room and how long does it take for it to melt.

Also during small group time, the children wrote in their journals about what they know about winter or their favorite winter activity.

During circle time the children sang a song to retell the story The Mitten by Jan Brett sung to the tune of the song Hi Ho Cherry O.  The children sang and used words and pictures to represent the animals crawling into a mitten.  They took turns tracking the words to the song and putting the animals in the mitten to get cozy and warm.

This week they were introduced to a snowflake poem too where they practiced tracking the words, finding popcorn words, then played a game where the snowflakes fell in the classroom.  Each snowflake had a popcorn word or a thematic word like snow written on it.  When the snowflakes fell the children had find their partner with the same word as them.  It was really a great movement game and an enriching way to practice popcorn words.

Finally to culminate the weeks activities we went out to the court yard to explore the snow and practice our building skills.  The children were engaged in conversations about packing snow and soft snow, how to build a snow pile, what makes some of the snow hard like ice vs other soft snow.  How to make snow angels and so much more!  We tried to practice safety and manners to by not throwing snow in each others faces as that is so painful!  The kids had a blast and so did the teachers:)

A Peek Ahead to next week...

Continuing with our winter theme, we will focus on the two polar regions at the north and the south of the earth.  We will focus on the animals that live in these polar regions, and how they survive in those areas.  

We will continue to work with our popcorn words and introduce new ones.  In Math, we will focus on simple addition story problems using manipulatives and seeing the number sentence written out (5+2=7).  In Science, we will continue to explore the snow and ice and how they melt.  Also we will study the polar animals like the polar bear and the penguin.  In Social Studies, we will focus on where the polar animals live compared to us in the Chicago Area.  The children started working on their self portraits at the end of last week and will continue to draw representations of themselves this coming week and then they will write in their journals about the polar animals that we are studying.  We will continue to assess their individual skills this week and focus on reading groups too.  In reading groups we might focus on popcorn words, sequencing, tracking words, or comprehension questions.  The children will also be working on making popcorn words with popcorn for a great fine motor and sensory experience.  

We will also welcome Kyler Bunton to the classroom on Tuesday.  Kyler is one of the Upper School students and is completing his January Short Term project (JST) in the JK classroom.  Kyler will assist with small groups and centers.  He will interact and read with the children.  For his time with us he is interested in the social and emotional development of the JK kids and their academic skills.  I am personally excited to have in the classroom as he is a former first grade student of mine:)

Welcome Back from Break: Week of January 3 - 7

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.