Here's a wrap up of the last few weeks. I'll start with fairy tale week from last week. Our morning literacy routine featured the nursery rhymes Jack and Jill, Hey Diddle Diddle, and Humpty Dumpty. We made a phonics activity out of the last one.
Fast forward to Friday of that week, the students came dressed as book characters. Ava chose Humpty Dumpty and insisted we use her instead of the plastic egg!
While our centers and math workshops reflected the fairy tale theme, the real star of the week was STEM (activities involving science, technology, engineering/math). Our STEM project for Humpty Dumpty was this: students worked in pairs to select materials, draw up a design plan, and then create a protective covering for Humpty Dumpty. Each pair was given a hard-boiled egg to protect then we headed out to the basketball courts and each egg took a fall off the wall.
Sawyer and Patrick's egg was the only one not to crack!
Here it is in action.
But the STEM fun didn't stop there! After reading the 3 Little Pigs, the students had to try to beat the Big Bad Wolf by designing a stick house (made of toothpicks and gum drops) that could withstand the Big Bad Wolf's blow (a hairdryer). This was the perfect way to introduce the students to the concept of 3D shapes.
We followed up the fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk with a not-so-much STEM activity (only "engineering" involved if you can even call it that)- building the giant's castle in the clouds.
The students responded to the fairy tales with their writing, too.
For Little Red Riding Hood, they told what they liked to do at their grandma's house.
After reading The 3 Billy Goats Gruff, they told whether they had any brothers or not.
After reading The Little Red Hen (which features only animals) the students told about their animals at home.
A few of our math workshops had a fairy tale theme as well. Here, the students played out Little Red Riding Hood. Each had a dozen eggs they needed to get to Grandma (because I forgot that she actually delivered baked goods- I got my fairy tales mixed up!) But if they landed on the wolf, they had to give him one egg. Games like this are getting the students familiar with subtraction before I teach it explicitly with the whole group.
They played a game just like Eyeball Soup from the week before - except this time it was Jack's Magic Bean Collection. The students rolled a number, put that many beans into their ten frame, and then counted up how many more they needed to make ten.
We wrapped up the week with one more fairy tale activity. After hearing about all the fairy tale villains, we decided we would try to catch them the old-fashioned way (since the stories themselves are very old). The students chose a villain coloring sheet, colored it according to the code, cut it out, and pasted it to a WANTED poster, along with the reason they were wanted. Then we posted them all throughout the hallways.
Now for this week - in photo and caption form because I'm kinda in a rush right now.
Then students played the same game at math workshops.
Learning about teen numbers as a group of ten and some ones left over by setting our tables for Thanksgiving dinner.
Working on addition by building a turkey (spin two numbers, add together, go to the "turkey store", get the piece. Boys versus girls style.
Then students played the same game at math workshops
New sight word station activity to go along with our First Thanksgiving theme.
Other new sight word station: crayon-resist water color painting
Sorting out "then" items from the Pilgrim days and now.
Syllable Work
Sharing their journal writings with the class
Match up the CVC words, write them down (Word Work center)
Reach into the box of paper shreds, find uppercase, lower case letters, and a picture to indicate a beginning sound.
Book-making/Social Studies center
Another math workshop - subitizing. Big word for recognizing a number in many forms, basically.
Again with the turkey building......
Magnet center reviewed what we'd done as a whole group (syllabication and sorting then and now)
Quiz Quiz Trade Sight Word Game. Here's how it's played.
honoring our veterans
Mrs. Taylor brought in her father's medals from WWII to show the class.
Working on our First Thanksgiving Fact Journals
After learning about how hard the Pilgrim and Native American children worked, the students wrote about their chores at home. Savannah has a lot, apparently.
And here's just some cute miscellaneous pics. If you need help coming up with ideas for the Alphabet party - check out the parties from our past.
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