It's Been a While....

My apologies for not adding to the blog recently. We have been SOOOO busy in Room 8! I have lots of great photos to add from recent units and activities, and now that I have a free minute or two, I thought I would share them with you! The first video is some photos from our recent science unit on matter. We explored liquids and solids and the differences between the two. Ultimately, children had to be able to classify an object as a liquid or a solid correctly and describe some characteristics of each of these things. The students did a wonderful job and had some hands-on fun with this unit!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today, we had the opportunity to learn about the Chinese New Year, which started on Monday, January 23rd this year. It is the Year of the Dragon, so we made dragon puppets to use in a special dance. Catherine, Danny and Linni's mom, brought us some Chinese dumplings to try and we had a special lunch in our classroom. We even got to enjoy some fortune cookies as dessert!We learned that the Chinese New Year is a time of great happiness and celebration in China and Chinese communities around the U.S. There are parades, festivals, feasts, and gift-giving to welcome the new moon, in the hopes that luck and prosperity will abound in the new year! The kids had so much fun learning about another cultures' traditions and celebrations, and we even learned a couple of Chinese words!
Gung Hey Fat Choi!

Scientists at Work!

We arrived back from the holiday break ready to learn and explore! Our science unit focused on magnets and how they work. We spent time thinking like scientists and conducted a number of experiments to figure out what makes a magnet a magnet.

Exploring with magnets.

Completing the "Buried Treasure" activity. We used magnets to try to find marbles, nails, screws, rings, and keys hidden in the rice table.

Veronica explores how magnets attract and repel each other!

We did an experiment called "Paper Clip Attraction," where we used three different sized magnets and counted how many paper clips each one picked up. We recorded our observations in our science notebook and discovered that the bigger the magnet, the more paper clips that it could pick up.

We had so much fun exploring with magnets and using our scientific minds! Next up: a unit on the ocean as we prepare for our Flynn Theater field trip next week!

We Are Readers and Writers!

We have been so busy in Room 8 over the last several weeks! Many exciting things have been happening, but perhaps the most exciting thing of all is that we are become READERS and WRITERS! We have been working up until now, building the foundation of skills needed to read and write, and all of the pieces are beginning to come together! It is an amazing process to watch and be a part of!

During Reader's Workshop, we have talked all year long about "what good readers do." Good readers take care of books, tell stories from the pictures and words in books, use stories they are familiar with to retell stories, and talk with others about things they are reading. We have practiced and practiced and practiced these different reading habits. These habits, along with our hard work with phonics (letters and sounds), will all help us as we embark on the exciting journey of learning to read emergent and "just right" books. Most of the work of learning to read will take place in first grade, but kindergarten is where children learn the basic skills of decoding words, using pictures to help them read, matching voice to print as they read, and using sight words in their reading. Just this past week, we all were given our special "Book Baggies" to be used during Reader's Workshop. These bags contain sight word books we have read and we "went shopping" for just right books to add to them. These just right books are very early readers with predictable, patterned text. Children will practice reading these books over and over again, both with a teacher and independently. Each week we will choose different books to add to these book baggies. Sometimes, books will come home for additional practice. The children are so excited to be "reading" and some of them even take their book baggies out to read during free choice time! Enjoy these pictures of our first few days with our book baggies!

Kaleb practices finger-pointing as he reads.Olivia points as she reads a sight word book.Evan reads Goodnight, Gorilla from his book baggie.

We have been just as busy during Writer's Workshop. Over the past couple of weeks, we each chose a piece of writing from our writing folder that we wanted to "publish" (which we learned meant to edit and make fancy for others to read, just like what real authors do with their books!) Children spent time rereading their writing and making sure their words made sense and their pictures had enough detail. On Thursday, we had an Author's Celebration! We each read our piece we chose to publish and we enjoyed M&M cookies to celebrate all of our hard work!
Taylor proudly shows off his writing at our Author's Celebration.
Emily shares her story at our Author's Celebration.
Olivia and Veronica enjoy some cookies after all of our hard work!

Happy Thanksgiving!

At this time of year, we take a moment to reflect on all the things we have to be thankful for in our lives. We have spent time this past week learning about the history of the Thanksgiving holiday and thinking about what we are thankful for. Please enjoy this video of your children's responses to the question "what are you thankful for?" I hope you enjoy their beautiful turkeys on your Thanksgiving tables this year!



I hope you all have a restful holiday with your loved ones. I, for one, am so thankful to have a class full of cheerful, curious, wonderful children to teach each day! Thank you for sharing them with me!

Butterfly Quilt

We spent time this week creating a beautiful Butterfly Quilt during math time. This project continued our exploration of patterns and shapes. We were so excited with our final product! Enjoy the picture of our quilt and the comments and observations below.

Noah: “It’s a rectangle.”

Helen: “There’s a pattern going down, too. It’s the same pattern as across.”

Danny: “There are four corners.”

Veronica: “There’s a pattern around the edge, too. Sponge-paint, butterfly…There are 17 butterflies.”

Emily: “The small sponge-paint squares are going diagonal.”

Brady: “The butterflies are diagonal.”

Taylor: “On the other quilt, we didn’t have butterflies. This one we do.”

Evan: “There’s a lot of yellow on the sponge-painting ones.”

Grace: “There are 18 sponge-painting squares.”

Nisha: “The butterfly squares and the sponge-paint squares are not equal.”

Kate: “There are 35 quilt squares.”

Halloween Fun!

We had a wonderful time at our Halloween celebration, which started on Friday afternoon with "Fun-O-Ween" that was sponsored by the sixth grade class. We made spider cracker snacks, played Monster Mash Musical Chairs, Pin the Wart on the Witch, and a number of other fun games. On Monday, we had so much fun showing off our costumes during the costume parade and then enjoyed lots of yummy goodies at our class party! Thank you to everyone who sent in treats and helped out during these fun activities!