Oh the Things Santa Can Help Us Learn!

We finished our needs and wants unit by writing a Christmas wish list. Before writing their list, we practiced stretching out words and writing the sounds we hear. Then students wrote/illustrated three things they want for Christmas. They shared their list with their partner and then identified the items on their list as needs or wants and explained how they knew the item was a need or want. We created a Santa glyph to compare Santa family traditions such as if they write a letter to Santa or not, if they leave him cookies/milk, or not, etc. Then we collected the data from our glyphs and compared using more/less/same as. 

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



December 2010

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted! December is a crazy month at school and home. I put together a slideshow of everything I took pictures of this month including the Christmas party! A huge thank you to every parent/guardian who sent food for the party and to Johanna's and Adalia's moms for helping serve and clean up at the party!

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Animal Needs

We have learned about animals needs and how they are very similar to the things people need to survive. We also learned about how the Earth provides for their needs. We played a survival game, where we pretended to be animals. We had to find food, water, and get in a chair (shelter) to stay in the game. After each round, we took away some of the food/water/shelter to show what happens to animals when people come in and change animals' habitats.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Animal Creations

This week we've been learning about animal needs and how the Earth provides for their needs as well as ours. On Friday, we went to the science lab and observed all the animals. Then we created and illustrated our own new animals in our science journal and showed their shelter, food, and water. The students were really creative! We had a kangafly (kangaroo and butterfly) and spidaturtle (spider and turtle). Below I've included pictures of our animals, the students working in their journals, and some of their creations.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Animal Needs

This week we are learning about animal needs. We have learned that animals need most of the same things people do. The way their needs are met is different though. On Monday, we made a graph of pets students in our class have. Then we analyzed our data. We also discussed how our pets are dependent upon us to help meet their needs. We compared/contrasted the way we take care of our pets with the way our parents take care of us.