Never Eat Sour Worms...

This morning we had some new word work for our daily 5 practice!  We had trays, magnetic letters, and cards with our spelling and high frequency words on them.  Everyone had fun practicing spelling new and old words as well as some other ones!

 

 

 

We also had some new boom sticks with harder words on them :).

 

 

And of course dry erase boards always make sentence writing more fun!

 

 

 

This afternoon we also started working on Maps and Globes.  We started with something super fun...the compass rose!  On our schedule it said our activity was "Never Eat Sour Worms" and all day long there were questions about what that meant.  They were VERY eager to get to that part of the day!  Once we got there and I told them that "Never Eat Sour Worms" was a way to remember the order of the compass rose they thought it was very funny!  Then of course we got to eat some sour worms...to help stick it in the brain of course!!!

 

 

 

 

Right before Art Carolyn read us a book that she had made about Zoo Boo.  Everyone is now very excited and ready for Zoo Boo...just a month or so too early :).  Thanks for sharing your book Carolyn!

 

Squeezing the tube...

We started our fantastic Friday with a Mystery Reader.  If you are interested in signing up to mystery read on a Friday after Family Gathering I'm attaching the link.

 

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0b4aaaa82faafa7-mystery

 

 

Today we continued talking about being good citizens and did a fun activity to help make the concept more concrete to everyone.  Everyone got their own toothpaste or lotion tube, plate, and plastic knife.  They got to squeeze it all out on the plate (don't worry I told them they can't do this at home)!  Then I challenged them to use the knife and try to get all the lotion or toothpaste back in the tube.  While they all made a great effort they noticed they could get a little bit back in if they pushed it hard but really it wasn't possible to get it all back in the tube.  We then regrouped and came back to the carpet for a discussion.  I told them when you are mean, unkind, or hurt others you are squeezing their tube.  While you can say sorry and get some of the hurt back in it can't always be 100% fixed.  If you are mean to others over and over again you will keep squeezing their tube and this will gradually hurt them more and more.  They were very receptive to this and began discussing how they could help fill a tube or bucket instead of squeeze it out.  They were great at relating it back to our bucket fillers and how to fill others bucket!  Hopefully we will be a class full of bucket and tube fillers from now on :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday afternoon Engineering!

After reading our number of the day book telling us to make something with 22 blocks for the 22nd day we decided to take it one step further!  We used 22 cups to make giant towers.  Every table started with 11 cups and practiced to see how they could get them to stand up and be steady.  This took lots of team work, cooperation, and focus.  Then once they were able to be successful they formed 2 big teams.  Each team had 22 cups. Their task was to make a tower that was tall using their 22 cups.  This was for sure a harder and more challenging task.  It again took teamwork, cooperation, and focus for this task to be completed.  After a few errors both groups were able to successful make 22 cup buildings for the 22nd day of school!  Happy STEAM work afternoon :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hunt for nouns!

All week long we've been learning all about nouns.  All different types of nouns, noun categories, and nouns in our environment.  We've had the opportunity to talk about them, look at them, watch a video about nouns, and write about nouns.  We even got to go on a noun hunt around our room.  Everyone got to go around the room and find or think of various nouns and write them under the correct category.  They had to find people/animals, places, and things.  Some friends used their previous experiences outside of our classroom to think of items we don't have in our room like animals or places they could go.  They all were great at helping if someone had a question or needed assistance finding, writing, or spelling a word.  Overall it was a wonderful hands on learning experience all about NOUNS! :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABC order!

We started working on ABC order!  As a class we put our weekly spelling and high frequency words in ABC order then we got to work on cutting and pasting our own set in ABC order.  Last we used our planners to write our weekly words in ABC order!  We are going to become ABC champs soon :). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got some EEKK and silent reading time today with our daily 5!!!  Reading daily is an important part of our classroom and we have daily reading time :)

 

Fruit snack math!!!

Today we had some fun with math!  We were number detectives and found numbers within other numbers!  And thanks to our snack helper this past week we did some math with fruit snack! This of course made math super exciting :).  

Once we were all done they were super excited to eat the fruit (they thought it was funny that I told them they could eat the numbers).