Kacsko's Kiddos: The Virtual Classroom

Monday was blue day. Can you tell? The afternoon class is rocking the "Color Mondays!"

So this week, just like last week and the weeks to come, started with a new color song and a group writing about blue. These anchor charts, which are displayed in our room, are helping us learn how we put our thoughts on paper. They are direct examples for the students to use during journal time. The repetition in the sentence structure this week helped reinforce two new sight words: 'is' and 'blue.'

Centers were a hit with the kids this week. They got to play on the two classroom ipads in the Number Work center to practice forming/writing 1-5. The app is called LetterSchool and I highly recommend it if you have an iphone or ipad (I'm not sure if it's available on android devices). They played "Roll and Graph" in the Math Games center and Letter Cookie Match in the Letter Work Center. The video link below shows Landan and Benjamin demonstrating how we're learning to take turns and help each other during center time.

Landan and Benjamin
(I would embed the video itself here so a new window wouldn't need to open but I don't know how. So, if any of you do, let me know!)

The students earned all of their brownie points at the beginning of the week and I brought some fresh brownies for them to enjoy at recess. We use brownie points to track how well we stay on task as a whole group during group intruction time. At the end of each class, if the smile tally marks are more than our frown tally marks, we put a brownie in the pan. (This is teaching the concept of more and less as a bonus)!

You will see some examples of staying on task as a whole group in these video examples. All of these were taken in the morning class (I promise I'll take the next few in the PM) and are during our whole group phonics and whole group writing time. First we have Makiah leading the class as they read her superstar chart.

Makiah's Superstar

Next we have a two-parter. Each week we learn two letters and make anchor charts to go with each. The students brainstorm with their teacher partner, then we share individually as I add it to the chart. You'll have to excuse the videography. Mrs. Taylor is a techie-in-training.

Teach! Okay!

C or D?

We finished the week with another Fun Friday art project. Our theme this week was the primary colors and we read the book "Little Blue and Little Yellow" to wrap up. The illustrations in the book are simple, different-colored shapes. The students retold a part of the story with their tissue paper artwork. The kids loved this activity!