Loving Learning Centers

These pictures were just too cute not to post!  The children have really been enjoying choosing their learning centers and I have watching them incorporating our lessons into their choice time.  Lily is re-telling Caps for Sale to the pillow audience, we have several dream"boxers", and my builders love the challenge of counting how many blocks they use as they build towers taller than themselves!

Mrs. Dieken the Mystery Reader

 Yesterday we had a double dose of fun!  We had the chance to celebrate Ava's birthday and welcome Mrs. Dieken as our mystery reader.  She brought a very funny pattern book and the children impressed me with their ability to see her use of character voice and the author's use of repeating phrases.

Upcoming Events

September 20-Last day to donate to Growing Barretts fundraiser & Apple day
September 23-25- Speech Screenings
September 27th- Pretzel Sale (new date)
   * Soft Pretzels are for sale for $1.  Money raised goes toward buying more Hokki stools.
September 27th- Read and Munch (3:15-3:45)
October 1st- Conferences
October 2nd- Late Start
October 3rd- Conferences
October 18th- Pumpkin Patch (9:15-12:45)
October 25th- Hearing Screenings
October 31st- Halloween Parade (2:20) Party (2:40-3:40)

Birthday Blast!

 Happy Birthday Ava!

Today we are celebrating our very first class birthday!  We wanted to share our fun with you and let you in on a few class traditions!  Ava is our birthday girl today so she will celebrate the day by wearing a birthday crown and birthday badge so everyone in the hallway can greet her with birthday wishes!  She will also get to hold our birthday bear--and read to her during reading time!

During snack we will continue our celebration by allowing our birthday girl to choose the snack time books and we will circle up to sing "ice cream and cake" before presenting Ava with our class made gift...a "fill a bucket" birthday bag.  Each child took time yesterday with me during learning centers to create a note about something we value in our birthday girl.  She will get to take these sentiments home to share with her family as a reminder of all that she brings to brighten our classroom each day!

check out our ice cream and cake dance party song!

 

Mathematician Machines!

Yesterday during math time we experimented with math centers.  The children were all assigned different task based on their unique number knowledge.  Some children were working on dream box, others were building numbers with blocks and white boards, others still were arrange numbers from 1-20 using numbers, pictures, and number words.

The children are becoming very comfortable solving simple addition problems using their fingers, counters, and picture representations!  As a class we continue to work on number ID 1-20 and writing numbers 1-20.

Authentic Actors!

This week we have been reading familiar books and working on what readers do DURING reading.  Last week we talked about what we do BEFORE reading (picture walk, looking for characters and setting on the cover).  To help the children with learning to think about the story as they read we have been focusing on story telling with character voice, story language (phrases particular to the book), and repeating phrases.  The children have loved acting out the stories and are creating puppets to help tell the stories to their 3rd grade buddies and to you, their families! Be on the look out soon for video of their theatrical performances.  

Books we have read this week:

Caps For Sale

The little mouse and the red, ripe strawberry

Henny Penny

Gingerbread Boy

Little Red Hen

**When reading at home, please encourage your child to identifying the story language, repeating phrases, and the characters, setting, and problem/solution**

Mystery Reader Madness!

Today we had a surprise visit from Finn's fabulously, funny dad.  He read "Pete the Cat" and "One Fish, Two Fish" with amazing character voice and expression...leaving the kids rolling on the floor with laughter.  We just love to listen to new stories told by great story tellers.  Thank you for sharing your time and talents with us Mr. W!