St. Patrick's Day

   We watched Holiday Facts and Fun: St. Patrick's Day and we read It's St. Patricks' Day. Then students illustrated a symbol for St. Patrick's Day. We grouped our symbols on our circle map and used shared writing to stretch out and label our symbols. On the frame of our circle map, we wrote where we learned about St. Patrick's Day.

    We wrote to explain why we wear green on St. Patrick's Day. I love how almost every child drew themselves as leprechauns.

    We read Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato and discussed story elements (characters, setting, and key events from the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Then students illustrated a part of our story map, and then they cut their pictures out. We put our story map together.

    We read and acted out 5 Little Shamrocks. Then students created and recorded their own shamrock subtraction stories.

    Mrs. Reed and I made leprechaun punch for the students while Mrs. Loftus read What Leprechauns Do. Then students enjoyed their leprechaun punch.

Here's our schema chart for St. Patrick's Day.

Here's my little leprechauns!

Reading Comprehension

We worked on making inferences which is using what the story says, what I know, and looking at the pictures to figure out things are aren't completely explained in the story. This is a chart we made as we read three mini stories. I modeled the first one, the students and I talked through the second story with the students, and then the students talked to their partner for the third story and agreed what we should write in each column. 

We've been working on using our five senses to identify sensory details in stories and poems. We read the poem Christmas Presents. Then we charted the sensory details the author used to help us create a mental picture. We also acted out the poem. 

We read Christmas Angel in the Clifford's Puppy Days series. As a class, we created a story map that included the main characters, setting, and key events from the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

Gingerbread Man Learning Fun

We read several different versions of The Gingerbread Man and we compared and contrasted the different versions of the story. We created a story map that included characters, setting, and key events for Deanna Jump's Gingerbreadman story. We also acted the story out. We also used our five senses to identify sensory details in the story and charted the words that helped us to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell details in the story. We also wrote a Gingerbread poem and created Gingerbread men glyphs. 

We did an experiment with a Gingerbread Man cookie to figure out why he didn't swim across the river himself. We put a cookie in a cup of water and recorded our hypothesis.

We recorded what the cookie looked like when 20 minutes had passed.

 We recorded what the cookie looked like after an hour and wrote/illustrated our conclusion.

Of course, we enjoyed eating gingerbread man cookies.

Dr. Seuss Fun

Dr. Seuss week has been the students' favorite by far! We had so much fun reading his stories and integrating them into our lessons last week!

On Monday, we had Cat in the Hat day. We wore black and white and read the story. We wrote about what we do if the Cat came back. We read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and created fish additon stories using color goldfish crackers. We learned about Dr. Seuss' life.

On Tuesday, we wore silly socks for Fox in Socks. We graphed whether or not we wore silly socks to school and anaylzed our data. We also created pairs of rhyming socks. We reviewed systems and created machines to clean our rooms. We also read My Many Colored Days, chose a color, and wrote how we feel on that color days.

On Wednesday, we wore mismatched clothes for Wacky Wednesday! We also had a special visit from the Cat in the Hat who read to us The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. We compared that story with the stories we wrote on Monday. Then created a story map for  Wacky Wednesday. We read Bartholomew and the Oobleck and made oobleck with Mrs. Guntorius' class. We read Happy Birthday to You and created a cirlce map of birthday celebrations. We also had blue goo and pink ink for Dr. Seuss' birthday.

On Thursday, we wore slippers for The Foot Book. We took off one slipper/shoe, put in the middle, then sorted and made a list of the ways we sorted. Then we compared and contrasted using a double bubble map the oobleck we made with Dr. Seuss' oobleck. We read Oh The Places You'll Go and wrote about a place we would like to go. We read Dr. Seuss' ABC and created our own ABC book.

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



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