Spreading a Little Holiday Cheer!
Tis the SEASON!!! This lively group of firsties is super excited for the holidays! If you haven't heard already, we have been ecstatic the last two days as we have been introduced to a new addition to our class this month. Meet our very own Elf on the Shelf!
Thursday marked the first day in our countdown to Christmas as we met our new friend for the very first time. Our room was already decorated the day before and the class was quite certain we would be having a visit from an elf. Well, low and behold, there he was Thursday morning, sitting right on our Christmas Tree! The Oooos and Ahhhhs and squeals of excitement simply could not be contained!! We spent a little time making sure to read a special letter from Santa explaining all of the rules that come with our elf. Santa made sure to tell us that we needed to work together in order to find the PERFECT name for our new friend. After some thinking, suggestions were made and a majority vote took place.
Drum roll please........ the class has decided that our friend's name is Black Shadow (because he is both magical and sneaky)! I love it!
Along with Santa's note, we have received to very special letters from Black Shadow, and will continue to get them every day! Our friends cannot wait to find out when the newest letter has arrived. We haven't figured out if it is brought by the mailman or if Black Shadow has used his magic to deliver the letters. Either way, it is pretty special.
Each day this month, we will be participating in a Random Act of Kindness. Our elf has told us that he is here to watch what we do and report back to Santa each night. He has made us a paper chain with a random act of kindness on each link. Each day we will tear a new link off and see what random act of kindness we can show to others. We have learned that showing a random act of kindness is something that we find time in our day to do - not something that is planned ahead of time to do. Therefore, we have found that when we complete our work on time we often have a bit of time left over to show kindness.....such as writing a nice note to a friend in the class or take a walk around the room to clean it up extremely well to give our night time custodian a little break.
Not only has Black Shadow been able to witness these random acts of kindness but he has also seen a lot of great learning experiences the last couple of days as well! During writing this week we continued learning about how we write How-To stories. We discussed and explored the topic of How To Blow a Bubble. We discussed together each step it would take to blow a bubble using bubble gum. As the students thought of the steps, I took a piece of gum out and followed along as if they were teaching me. We had to think hard about every step. As the reader may not have knowledge about the subject going in, we learned we need to be very specific. For instance, we found out that we can simply say chew the bubble gum first because gum comes with a wrapper. If we don't tell the reader to unwrap the gum first, we definitely won't have a successful bubble at the end! Take a peak at the pictures below of our friends working with their own piece of bubble gum while they wrote about each step...we had some pretty big bubbles!
We learned about a couple of new digraphs this week in spelling and phonics. We reviewed the concept of what a digraph is (two consonants coming together to form a different sound) as well as practiced in multiple ways what those skills look and sound like in words. We worked on the -ck, kn- and wr- digraphs which are all quite tricky to master. Our class did quite well remembering those sounds. Make sure to keep practicing each week at home as we are continuing to move on to more difficult phonics skills!
During reading workshop this week we have been focusing on a story called Once Upon an Ordinary School Day by Colin McNaughton. You can watch a video of the story below. It is a fun story about an ordinary boy who experienced something extraordinary at school one day!
We spent time discussing new vocabulary including; ordinary, extraordinary, bounding and suddenly. We also spent a little time talking about point of view and focused on the sequence and detail of the story. Our friends noticed some similarities to our classroom as we too listen to music during our day (this is always on during writing time). We then thought it would be fun to use our own imaginations and let the music inspire us. We spent a short amount of time listening to instrumental music and just letting our imaginations explode. We took some time after to discuss what the music made us think of - there were some very created friends. You can see a short clip here:
I don't know about you but I think there may be a couple of future drummers in our group! :)
During math this week we have continued to work on strategies to find missing addends (or partners) in an addition story problem. This can betricky stuff! It requires a lot of close listening to be able to hear each step in a story problem, determine which number is missing (a total or a partner), then fill in a math mountain and count on to find the missing partner! Not only this, but our class is learning how to read their story problems on their own as well. We have also learned how to label our answers. Next week we will continue looking at finding missing partners while reading subtraction story problems.
We have a busy couple of weeks ahead of us as we work through December and up until break. We will be busy in every subject as well as having some fun in the mix! On Tuesday, we will be visiting the High School Auditorium for the majority of the morning as we rehearse for Tuesday's concert. Remember to have your child dropped off to the H.S. Choir room by 6:45 ---I'll be there waiting to help get our class lined up!
Throughout the month I am asking for volunteers to come in and be a Mystery Reader! This is so fun for our friends. They are always curious to find out who that mystery person will be. Will it by mom? dad? grandma or grandpa? As long as you have a volunteer clearance form turned in please sign up with me to pick a date! I have times available for the following dates; Dec. 9th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 19th, and 21st! If you are available on one of these dates we would love to have you visit - it is a short time commitment of about 10-15 minutes, as we will move on to the next portion of our day as soon as story time is over. As you can see below, we had a fun visit from Mr. Mankiewicz this week. Our friends loved listening to him read a couple of short Christmas stories to us!
Don't forget to sign up for our K-1 Lunch and Learn happening on December 16th! We are so excited to have the opportunity for you to come in and have lunch with your child, meet with our K-1 teachers and learn some valuable reading strategies to take home and work on with your child --- you will even have an opportunity to practice with your child before you go home! Reading is an extremely important, life-long skill that your child is in the midst of learning now. We want to share with you just what our reading strategies look like so that you can help them use them at home too! Our friends LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to read and get very excited when they are recognized for using one or more of the strategies and practice makes progress!!
