Week of January 5--First Week Back 2015

We had a busy week getting back into our regular routines and re-learning classroom and school expectations.  We read the story The Snowy Day several times during the week and worked on a variety of reading strategies such as making connections, inferring, and visualizing the story.  The kids loved the story of Peter.  Please ask them about it.

We also read a variety of winter stories featuring snowmen, i.e. The Biggest Snowman Ever, How to build a Snowman.  We worked on a couple of different snowmen projects.

Project #1:

The kids had so much fun creating snowmen using Q-tips and paint: it was our kinder version of pointilism.  

Everyone is working really hard dipping their Q-tips and painting their snowmen.

Nikolas is concentrating on his snowman.

Cody has a cute little snowman.

Garrett and Kernan are making some cool snowmen.

Jeidin likes his snowman.

Alex is painting some snow.

So is Samuel :)

Happy birthday Nikolas!  We celebrated his birthday on Tuesday, December 6.

Project #2:

The kids really enjoyed making snowmen with the letters of their names.  Some snowmen were long, some very short!

We made snowmen with the letters of our names.  

Hannah had a fun time creating her snowman from the letters of her name.

Gage and Gio have some short snowmen.

Gabby, Hannah and Vaughn are tracing the letters of their name on their snowmen.  

Lillian is kind of in the picture....

Morning Work:

When the kids first come into the classroom first thing in the morning, they hang up their coats and backpacks, put away their snacks, give me any notes, and grab their morning work booklet.  Their morning work booklets are differentiated, meaning they are "just" right for each kiddo.  Some kids are working on their letters/sounds and some are working on sightwords.   All packets have some math too. Morning work takes about 5 minutes, then the kids go and "read" a book.  This gives me time to talk with any parents who might be in the classroom or help a child who is having a "major" crisis (i.e. untied shoes, lost gloves, etc.).

Look how focused all these kiddos are.  

Jakob has almost finished the whole page.

Alex is concentrating pretty hard as is Gage.

That's it for this week!