.....And We're Off!
Week two is officially under our belts, and it was a great one! It was fun to dig into the curriculum and begin to develop some dendrites!
This week, we reviewed all vowel sounds, and many consonant letters. We have been segmenting words (breaking them up into their individual sounds), to become better readers and writers. It is especially important for students to "stretch" their sounds when writing a word, and phonetically spelling it the best they can. Additionally, it is important to 'use your sounds', as we often say, to have them stretch out a word and read it correctly. This begins with a lot of manipulating sounds to build words and re-build new words. I had a great photo of this in action, but it seems to be missing from my camera roll! We'll be working more on this each week, so we can grab some more photos of our word work later. For now, ask your child to show you how we use our (imaginary) rubber bands to stretch out the sounds in a word. Can they stretch out words such as: dig, bag, hug, fish, mast, fist, or pin?
FABLES
We dove into some fun stories this week, and our focus is on Aesop fables. We read The Boy Who Cried Wolf, as well as The Maid and the Milk Pail. We learned that fables were told long ago, and weren't always written down. Therefore, fables can have various versions as the storyteller might change them slightly each time. Also, characteristic of fables, we learned that they are fiction stories with various story elements: characters, setting, plot (beginning/middle/end), and a moral/lesson to be learned.
We worked on some of these elements in depth. Check out our big kid work! I am so impressed with the quality of work!
These are our interactive reading journals. This is where we keep a lot of our work and watch our skills progress throughout the year. You may not see a lot of work come home in regards to our focus stories, because we document and save our work here. This type of work allows us to incorporate a lot of fine motor skills that are still incredibly important to this age group: cutting, gluing, coloring, writing, and drawing....all while working toward other academic goals as well. Plus, it's just fun!
Kyla was caught off guard by Mrs. Powell's not so sneaky paparazzi skills!
Here are the digital versions of the stories we read, in case you want to watch the short videos and discuss your child's learning at home!
Can your child recall the moral of this story?
This version of the Maid and and Milk Pail is slightly different than our story in class...
We learned a funny saying at the end of this story. Can your child recall the moral/funny saying that the mom said the the girl? (Don't count your chickens before they're hatched).....ask your child what that means!
Math: Building Number Sense
We were also excited to introduce some math game this week! Math games are a great way for our students to apply what they have learned from whole group or small group instruction with Mrs. Powell, as well as continue to practice prior skills so that we do not forget what we have learned! Each day in math, we begin with warm ups, group time instruction, independent practice and then end with stations/games. In addition to practicing the math skills, students are also working on social skills such as: taking turns (compromising who goes first), problem solving, having conversations, sportsmanship (how to win/lose gracefully), and much more! We're also learning to care for the materials in our classroom and build responsibility by using the game pieces correctly, and putting our materials away when we are done.
This is a game called "What Comes Next". Students roll a die, say the number, and cover up the number on the board that comes AFTER the one they rolled. This is great for leading us into addition of +1.
These students are training their brains to recognize numbers in a variety of ways. They are playing Subitizing Bingo. Playing this game with your child at home helped reinforce practicing correctly so that they are able to play it independently with their friends. We definitely don't like to practice the wrong way, so it is important that these games can be learned and played ahead of time for students to be most successful on their own!
We LOVE Grandma D! If you ever hear about Grandma D, or Grandma Dorothy, at school, she is our WONDERFUL grandparent volunteer that helps out every day in almost every classroom! She reads with students, helps them with work completion, and spends a lot of one on one time with students who may need extra practice to master a skill. We truly appreciate her time and dedication to Forest View! Our students and teachers are so lucky to have her!!
Have a great weekend, everyone!
*Thank you to those that have sent in anti-bacterial hand wipes. It wasn't on our original supply list, but with the allergies in our classroom, the wipes make hand washing super efficient, and are a time saver for our little people instead of waiting in a long line. Every now and again if you want to send in a container of anti-bacterial hand wipes (not baby wipes)....we will take them! Thank you so much!!!
