Busy Minds, Busy Bodies, Busy Little Learners!

Wow! What a whirlwind couple of weeks we have had getting back into our routine! Cold/wet weather has made for short weeks, making it difficult to get fully into our daily/weekly routine! With all of these snow days, it can some times be hard getting back into the swing of things and devoting our full attention to the work at hand without getting restless. Don't forget to keep working at home, especially on those 'days off.' Maintaining those routines and working on those skills when not at school makes it that much easier when we return!

*Set aside time to read/be read to

*practice counting and adding

*work on sight words with you child

All of these skills and more will help your child when working at school! Lets hope for full weeks ahead as we move through the remainder of January and into the following months! We have been spending a lot of time this month amid our normal daily lessons completing some necessary testing. We will wrap up reading assessments, sight words, Dibels, I-Ready math and reading, and a more this week. Each of these assessments help give us a clear picture of the growth your child has been making so far this year!

Reading

Our focus has been on learning to be ourselves, kindness and freedom. The week we returned we read about The Bad Case of Stripes. A story of a young girl who was not true to herself and ended up paying the price. She learned that no matter what it is important to not give in to peer pressure and to follow her feelings.

Next, we focused on the story of The Invisible Boy. A story of a young boy who felt that he was left out, looked over and forgotten about and therefore felt as though he was invisible. It wasn't until a new student came to school who began to notice him and include him that he began to brighten and felt important. We learned about a variety of actions we can show others to help them to feel included and not invisible.

Last week we spent time learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and what he did to help promote freedom for African Americans. We read a few books about what he did to impact the lives of so many. Not only did we discuss how influential he was as a leader but also discussed how we could be similar to Martin Luther King Jr. in our actions and words.

Finally, this last week we learned about Point of View. We have read two wonderful stories about point of view and about how everyone views the world from a different perspective. First, Duck! Rabbit! A short story of depending on how you look at a picture, you may see it as a duck or a rabbit. Next was Daft Bat. This fun story showed how a young bat viewed the world in a different way (upside down) as compared to the other animals in the story. It was not until the animals spent time upside down that they finally realized the bat wasn't crazy and that he had a valid perspective! We spent time discussing what it means to have your own point of view. Students were able to show their own perspective when writing about the story Duck! Rabbit and whether they saw the figure as a duck or a rabbit! We had lots of opinions and reasons flowing in to defend their points of view!

Spelling

We are working on our long vowel sounds right now. We have been discussing what we call a 'Sneaky E." We have learned that when we see an e on the end of a word, this makes the medial vowel say its name. For example snake, cake, rake, kite, bike, ripe... all have a long vowel sound rather than the short vowel sound found in mat, hat, cat, kit, fit, or sit. We will continue working through our remaining vowels in the coming weeks. This coming week's focus being on the letter u.

Math

We have spent some time after returning from break focusing on how we use our materials during math. We have been discussing the importance of focusing during lessons, not playing with materials, which will help tremendously when learning new content and strategies. We are working this unit on Tens and Ones and learning various strategies to help represent different two-digit numbers. We have been learning about and using tens sticks and ones with both hands on manipulatives and in written form.

Literacy Centers

In addition to our daily lessons we have had to scale back and take a look at behaviors and expectations during our center time. We have taken a look back at exactly what the purpose of our various centers are and the behaviors and work that is expected at each center. This is taking time but we know that when back into our full, normal routine we will be ready to go. We are also looking forward to new activities being introduced into some of these centers soon!

Letting Our Busy Bodies Be Busy!

Not only have we not been in our normal routine, but some days it has just been to darn cold to go outside. We know that our busy bodies need breaks so that our minds can refocus and learn. We have been making sure to spend some intentional breaks getting our bodies up and moving. We need that blood flowing and we need to give those wiggles a chance to escape! We love going onto GoNoodle and helping pick the dance party or exercise activity we get to do. We have also continued using yoga as a way to calmly relax to get into that learning groove again. Here was our last fun yoga experience....Try it at home!