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.

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.

Playing 'School' at School

Future Kindergarten Teachers?



During our pretend play time, I caught a few of my students playing 'school'... something I used to do all the time when I was little. I thought it was cute and wanted to share it with you! :)

Polar Express Day

Today was Polar Express day which also means: PAJAMA DAY! The kids looked adorable in their flannel pants and footie pajama's.
After we read The Polar Express by Chris VanAllsburg we sequenced the story.  One of the things that happens in the story, is the boy drinks hot chocolate on the train.  We talked about hot chocolate ('ch') words and came up with a few to write on marshmallows.

We then made a giant mug for our hot chocolate words.

Love their little faces. 

Being silly.

Math: roll two dice, add the parts together to find the total. Then, color the Polar Express ticket that equals the sum.

We worked on our sentence building ... 

and had a little snack.



After lunch, I blew my conductor train whistle and handed the kids a ticket to board the train.

Once everyone had their ticket, we watched the movie, The Polar Express.  The students looked so cozy in their pajamas I had to take a picture!

Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me...

...I'm the Gingerbread Man!

We began this week with gingerbread man day. Thank you to all of the parents who donated frosting, sprinkles and cookies to our classroom. The students enjoyed decorating their cookies and eating them!

Labeling the gingerbread man together.

Labeling the gingerbread man independently.

Decorating their gingerbread cookies.

Noah loved his!

"We should do this every day" - we really should. It was super fun!

Comparing and contrasting the Gingerbread Man story and the Gingerbread Girl story.

Santa's Owl Elf

Santa wrote us a letter back! Along with his letter, he sent this special classroom owl elf with it. The owl elf watches over our classroom every day and flies back to the North Pole to tell Santa how everyone is doing at night.  The students know that they can't touch the owl elf because if they do, he will not be able to fly anymore. The students were so excited, we decided to name our owl elf.  After brainstorming ideas and voting, the kids decided to name him 'Pups'. 

Each morning the owl elf places this note on a few students' tables.  Keep up the great work friends. I have a feeling everyone will get a note before Chrsitmas!