Japan Study and More!

Wow! It is hard to believe that January will come to a close this weekend! We have been working hard all month long and have learned so many new things. We spent much of this month involved in a country study of Japan. We have learned about the culture, the people, and the land, and have been comparing Japan to our own country. We have completed many projects, including Japanese carp flags (celebrating Boys' Day-see photo at right) and we decorated paper fans (in honor of Girls' Day). We have also learned a number of songs, including the Japan Song and the Japanese Number Song. Please enjoy as you listen to our class sing both of these songs here!

Japan Song:


Japanese Number Song:


We will continue to learn about Japanese food and customs next week.

In literacy, we have been taking our knowledge of letters and sounds to learn how to "finger tap" simple words. Students use their fingers to "tap" out the sounds of a simple word and read it (for example, if they see the word mat in front of them, they say and tap /m/ /a/ /t/ and blend the sounds together to say "mat.") The children are very excited because they know that this is an important step in learning how to read. I am encouraging students to notice words around them and to try to read them using this strategy. It is also a great way for them to sound out and write words! We are also practicing sight words (also known as high frequency words): words that can not be sounded out because of their irregular sounds and must therefore by memorized or instantly recognized. Some words we have worked on this week include: the, I, a, me, and it. We will continue to add more words each week, and I encourage students to use these in their daily writing, as well.

In math, we continue to add more work stations and practice more complex skills. Some of our new work stations include, "Beat You to 20," "Ten and More," "Bucket of Sea Creatures," and "Beat You to 20 Cents." We are working on recognizing and using coins, grouping, sorting, patterning, and the concept of more than and less than. In the coming weeks, I will be introducing the children to the problem solving process using story problems.

I hope you all were as pleased as I was with your children's progress on the quarter 2 report cards. The entire group continues to impress me daily with their knowledge and great thinking skills. Before we know it, they will all be big first graders!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back from what I hope was a relaxing and fun-filled break spent with family and friends! The children seemed well-rested and thrilled to get back into our routine. We have not wasted any time getting back into the swing of things and are forging ahead with new content in all areas! In literacy, we continue to practice letter formation of uppercase letters. This unit will wrap up next week and we will then begin focusing on blending sounds to read and write simple words. During math, we are spending time on subitizing. I told your children that this is a very fancy math word and to ask you if you know what it means! Subitizing is the ability to instantly recognize dot patterns (i.e., the dot patterns on dice). We will play a number of games this week to help your child practice this skill. As you play board games with dice at home, I am sure you will notice their improved ability to recognize the dot patterns, instead of counting the dots.

In preparation for our field trip to the Flynn Theatre next Monday, our theme for the next couple of weeks will be an author study of author and illustrator Tomie dePaola. We will read a number of his books (he has written and/or illustrated over 200!) and complete activities to help us understand his style and will work on reading comprehension skills, as well. On Monday, January 11th, we will travel to the Flynn to see Strega Nona performed on stage. We are very excited about our first field trip and have been enjoying this book as our story bit this week! We will also spend some time next week learning about winter, which finally decided to make an appearance here in Hinesburg!

Please enjoy the picture slideshow below of an activity we completed related to subitizing. We read the book Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews and created our own dot pictures based on what we read. Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox slideshow