Day and Night

We're learning about space. We focused on day and night. We created a tree map of things associated with day and night. Then we sang Mr. Sun and Mr Moon. Then we discussed the differences in the two songs and created a venn diagram to compare/contrast day and night.

Then we read My Day: Morning, Noon, and Night. We created a list of night activities. Then we created a good night class book of what we like to do at night.

We also created a list of day activities and created a good morning class book of what we like to do during the day.

We also graphed whether we liked day or night better and analyzed our data.

The Mitten

We read The Mitten by Jan Brett. The students LOVED this story! Everyday they asked me to read it several times. We illustrated and wrote about an animal from the story on a mitten.

We sequenced the animals from the story on a mitten and then labeled the pictures with the animal name and ordinal number for the order they went into the mitten.

We read The Missing Mitten Mystery and created mittens. Then we labeled them by counting by twos. We used our mitten to practice skip counting by 2s. The students also created story maps for The Missing Mitten Mystery in their reader's notebooks.

Community

We have been learning about ordinary people who make an extraordinary impact in their communities. We learned about four famous African Americans: Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, George Washington Carver, and President Obama. Then we created a bridge map to help us remember each person's contribution to their community.

Shapes Everywhere

We reviewed two dimensional shapes and their properties. We read The Shape of Things and then took a shape walk around our school and recorded in our math journals all the shapes we found. We took pictures on our walk. We read The Greedy Triangle and then we used the pictures to create a tree map of the shapes we found.

We watched The Number Crew: Shape Escape on Discovery Streaming and then found a picture of a shape in magazine, cut and glued it on our paper, and then wrote about that shape and one of it's properties.

Snowman Estimation

We read A Really Good Snowman. Then we discussed estimation. We estimated how many cottonballs would fit inside a picture of a snowman. Then we put the cotton balls on the snowman and counted to find the actual number. We did this two more times. Then we wrote about what we learnd about estimation.

Penguins

Some penguin fun we had this week:

We made a penguin brace map and discussed the parts and their functions of penguins.

We created a penguin tree map to show what we learned about penguins.

We conducted an experiment to see how penguin feathers keep out water and how their blubber keeps out cold. We put Vaseline on our hand and put it in the water. The water bubbled up where the Vaseline was. Then we put one hand in a blubber (Crisco) glove and one straight in the ice water. We experienced how their blubber keeps out the cold.

We read Tacky the Penguin. Then we illustrated a penguin and used cubes to measure how tall our penguin was. Then we made them into a class book.

We made penguin glyphs to collect data about our class. Then we used our glyphs and graphed the results and wrote about our data.

Martin Luther King Jr.

We learned about Martin Luther King, Jr this week as well as why being different is good. We read a story called Being Different is Being Special. Then we examined in small groups a white and brown egg. We started a double bubble map to compare/contrast the two. Then we cracked them open and looked at the inside and finished our map. We learned that even though people are different colors on the outside, we are the same on the inside.

We discussed what peace looks and feels like. Then we wrote a poem about peace and made hand print doves.

We also read the poem A Box of Crayons. We talked about similarities and differences among people. Then we illustrated self portraits and colored our crayons.

We watched a Discovery Streaming video that showed us about MLK's life from boy to adult. Then we created a Venn Diagram to compare/contrast our class with MLK.

We listened to MLK's I Have a Dream speech. Then we wrote about our own dreams.

Weather

In science, we focused on weather-what it is and different types. We read Brave Irene  and noticed the way weather affected her in the story. Then we talked about appropriate clothing for different types of weather. We illustrated a picture of ourselves wearing appropriate hot and cold weather clothing.

We read The Wind Blew and conducted an experiment to see how wind affects objects. We experimented by trying to blow on the objects first. Then we predicted if we thought the fan would move them or not. Then we recorded the results.

We also were able to go outside to the garden with one of the Real School Gardens representative and learn about weather with him. We discussed the temperature and made observations using our senses as our science tools. We were even able to take a nature walk!

We learned about how clouds and rain are formed. We watched a clip from Magic School Bus where it shows the students forming rain drops in the clouds and then falling as snow and rain. Then we illustrated and wrote about what we learned in our science journals.

We also learned about characteristics of snowy weather. We read A Really Good Snowman and I showed them pictures from my house when it snowed last winter. We created a circle map of characteristics and then illustrated a snowy scene using white crayons on blue construction paper.

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Snowman Skills

This week we had a lot of fun integrating snowmen into the concepts and skills we worked on. In Language Arts, we read The Smallest Snowman and Snowmen at Night. Then we wrote and illustrated text to self connections. We also read There Was a Cold Lady who Swallowed Some Snow and created a story by writing and illustrating the characters, setting, problem, and solution in our reader's notebooks. We also played a word wall game where students found the word I told them written on a snowman. Then they swatted the snowman with the sun to "melt" him. We sequenced the pictures and sentences from our big book The Snowman. We made paper snowman lanterns to response to our poem Little Snowman.

In Social Studies, we talked about put events in chronological order. We talked about what happens to snowmen when the sun comes out. Then we illustrated a snowman melting. Then students used their pictures to tell the order of events to their partner. We also looked at pictures of snowmen from the books we read this week and talked about the different clothing items they wore. We discussed how those items meet our need for protection from the cold. The kids made an prediction that when the sun comes out, the clothing would probably help the snowman melt faster.

In Math, we read There Was a Cold Lady who Swallowed Some Snow and created a flow map of events. Then we used ordinal language to help retell the story events. We also illustrated and labeled the events from the story using ordinal numbers. We The First Day of Winter and then created snowmen glyphs in Pixie 2 about our winter activities preferences. We also analyzed and graphed our data from the glyphs in Excel as a class. We made and drank Snowman soup. Then we created a flow map of events. We wrote the ordinal numbers interactively and retold the steps with our partner.
There Was a Cold Lady who Swallowed Some Snow

Snowman Soup



Ordinal Numbers with Trains

We worked on sequencing events and using ordinal numbers in math this week. We read the book My Train by Michael Rex. Then I passed out 5 different colored trains to the students and told stories about the trains using ordinal and positional words. Their friends on the carpet helped them get in the right order. Then a student partner and I modeled how to tell each other stories to put in order using ordinal and positional language. Then I passed out a set of train cards to students in pairs or threes and they took turns telling each other stories using ordinal and positional language.

New Year's Celebrations

We talked about New Year's traditions at the beginning of the week. We talked about what New Year's resolutions are and why people make them. We made a goal for the New Year and wrote them on balloons. Most students put they want to be better readers and writers!

Then on Tuesdays, we talked about traditional New Year's day foods. We tasted blacked eyed peas and then graphed if we liked them or not. The kids were so funny! They either were asking for more or could barely stand the smell of them.