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Literacy

This week, our close reading lessons focused on books about Hanukkah. While reading the books, the children worked with visualizing and sequencing the events of a story. We discussed how when you visualize you make a movie in your mind. The children learned that one event can have many details. The children worked on including all the details in their visualizations. They drew illustrations of their visualizations and discussed what they saw, felt, heard, smelled, or tasted. 

Grammar Notebooks:

The children worked with proper nouns this week. They learned that a noun that names a special person or place is called a proper noun. A proper noun begins with a capital letter. 

On Friday, the children made proper noun pizzas. 

Writing:

This week, we continued working on our letter writing unit. The children each wrote a friendly letter to author Mo Willems. Their letters included titles of their favorite books, their favorite characters, and questions for Mr. Willems. Some of the children even included some ideas for new books that Mr. Willems should write. We will send the letters to Mr. Willems at the beginning of next week. We really hope to hear back from him soon!

Math

This week, we began Unit 4. This unit will focus on measurement. The children worked with measuring temperature using a thermometer. Later in the week, the children worked on measuring objects using non standard units, their personal foot, a standard foot, and a 12 inch ruler. They measured objects to the nearest foot and to the nearest inch. The children recorded their measurements using approximation language. My pencil is about 6 inches. The bookshelf is a little more than 4 feet.

Social Studies

This week, we continued our Winter Holidays unit. The children learned about how people celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas. We read several books, used a holiday powerpoint, and Pebble Go to research each of the holidays. 

On Monday, after learning about Hanukkah, the children enjoyed making a dreidel. While making the dreidel, they listened to and learned Hanukkah songs. The children also learned how to play the dreidel game.  

On Tuesday, after learning about Christmas traditions, the children made christmas trees. They also wrote a paper titled, How To Decorate A Christmas Tree. 

Star Student

Alexandra was our star student this week. Thanks Alexandra for sharing all about you!

Royal Reader

A special thank you to Alexandra’s Dad, he joined us this week as our Royal Reader. The children loved listening to the two stories that Mr. Saknovsky read, Falling For Rapunzel and Don’t Talk to Strangers.

Dressing The Dolphin

The children were excited to learn that I had dressed the dolphin on Friday! The dolphin was dressed as Pete The Cat! As the children cheered at the announcement, I heard things like: “I knew it was you, you like cats!” “I knew it, I just knew it, I saw the cat ears!” “I saw the little shoes and I thought to myself those have to be Brevin’s little shoes. So I knew you had dressed the dolphin!” 

Note:

-We will be taking a break from spelling next week to review the patterns and skills we have learned so far. There will be no spelling test! 

Happy Sunday!