Math and phonics with our names and the alphabet!

Hi Everyone!!

Whew!! Week two of school flew by, even with it being INCREDIBLY hot!!  We had a lot happen last week, including beginning our Reader's and Writer's Workshops!! The kiddos have been doing SO WELL with both subjects, I'm very proud!

Ms. K has taken over Writer's Workshop and has been doing an AWESOME job.  This week, the lessons focused on encouraging the students to try their best and work independently.  The class also spent a lot of time talking about how our pictures and words can work together to tell a story!!  (Teacher;s- Click here to access Deanna Jump's Writing Through the Year, Unit 1)

Starting our workshop time with a mini lesson!!

Our pictures and words tell a story as we add to our writing portfolios.

During our Reader's Workshop this week we learned all about being respectful, to our teacher, our classmates, and the books in our classroom.  We practiced good listening skills, proper book handling techniques, and how to read without disturbing others. We also got to look at some of the really cool books in our classroom!!  (Teachers- This link takes you to "Blasting Off With Reader's Workshop" by Kim Adsit)

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Mini Lesson!!  Are you a book lover or a book bully??

Reading groups with our book bins :)

We also started Daily News, Calendar Books, AND Word Explorers this week (we had a lot of new stuff happening!!)

Each morning, we will complete a Daily News before Calendar Books.  The Daily News helps us review skills we have been working on in class.  It's a great way to warm up our brains and start our day!!

Word Explorers are one way we practice sight words and word families.  We complete a Word Explorer sheet four times a week (we were a little light last week).  Each time we do Work Explorers we will start with four "Word Family" words or Sight Words.  We spell the words, box them, and cheer them (the fun part!!).  Then we will play one of the four games at the bottom to give us further practice with the words.  Look for these sheets to be coming home, A LOT!  (Teachers- check out this great resource from Deedee Wills here.)

We also had some thematic fun this week with our names and the letters in the alphabet.  (Many of these activities came from Deanna's Alphapalooza and Fun with Names units!!  The Chicka Chicka measurement trees were an original idea from me.)

We read the book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom", drew our own Coconut trees, and then used letters from the alphabet to practice nonstandard measurement.

We read the book "Chrysanthemum" to kick off our names activities.  I love this story!!

We created cub trains and paper trains with the letters in our names.  After we were finished, we used words like "shorter" and "longer" to compare and contrast our names.

We worked with partners to complete this fun Venn diagram, comparing the letters in our names and our partners names.

We worked so hard and did a great job using our fine motor skills to create these fun rainbow names.  After we made the names we compared all of our names to each make our own graph!

FINALLY, we finished our Pete the Cat drawings that we started last week in art!!!

Tomorrow, we will begin a unit on apples that will incorporate math, science, and literacy.  This is one of my favorite units of the year and I am really looking forward to it (I'm also looking forward to some cooler temperatures!!)

:) Mrs. Rogers