Monday, January 21, 2013

Patterns, Patterns, Everywhere!

We have a saying in our classroom, "Patterns, patterns, everywhere!" We often say this because we find patterns while we are learning about science, language arts and even math.  Last week we had the opportunity to explore shapes with patterns blocks.



 The students loved exploring the different shapes and we learned that if we combine shapes together, we can make new shapes and patterns.



We also learned about maps and even had a chance to look at our state, city and school using Google Earth.  The students were facinated by the map features.  It was fun and exciting to explore this together.  We then made a map of our classroom and the students made a map of their own bedrooms at home.  


Mrs. Balcer, our music teacher, helped make it possible for grades K-2 at our school to watch The Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra perform a Lollipop Concert at Central Wesleyan Church.  The students LOVED listening to the talented musicians and watching the dancers perform the story of Hansel and Gretel.


One of the books we read together was The Mitten, which is a story about a boy who's grandmother knits him a pair of mittens. Like most children do, the boy ends up losing one of his mittens while playing in the snow.  While he is at home, various animals from the wild outdoors discover the boy's lost mitten and climb inside to keep warm.  After we read the story, we practiced our retelling skills and worked on our sequencing.  The students then wrote about their own mittens.


Sunday, January 13, 2013

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I can't believe it's already January. It is crazy how quickly this school year is going.

It was so nice to see all of my owl friends again this week! I think the kids grew a few inches over break because they all look bigger to me now. :)



We read "There's a Wocket in my Pocket" by Dr. Seuss and discussed the difference between real and non-sense/make-believe words. 



I also read the story, "Snowmen at Night" to the students and we wrote about what we would do if we were snowmen at night. 


This student would drink hot chocolate if she was a snowman. Mmmm!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas break! It was so nice to spend time with family and catch up with old friends.  This is a little late but here are a few pictures from our Christmas party and our last week of December together.

Making and decorating our own Christmas trees a.k.a. sugar cones.


Yummy!


Our owl elf decided to hang up up pictures of himself with various popcorn words around the room for students to find and read with this read-the-room activity.



Since we didn't have snow outside we made our own with shaving cream. The students practiced writing popcorn words in the snow.