February

Happy February! 

*****Attention-Friday  2/22 is a fun play day-the children earned a whole jar of marbles and have earned a full day of play-they can bring in toys and/or a game.  The only rule is no play weapons or fighting and no electronics-and nothing that needs batteries.  I reminded the children to not bring anything in that is too special to them.  I also told them it is ok if they do not bring anything because we have plenty of things to play with.********************


​We celebrated the 100th day of school by doing a lot of counting to 100 by 1's and 10's.  The students really enjoyed making 10 piles of 10 fruit loops for their 100 necklace.  They also loved counting out 10 of 10 different snacks to make their 100th day snack mix.  It was a great day.

One week later, we enjoyed a fun Valentine's celebration.  We decorated cookies and sorted and graphed conversation hearts in the AM.  In the PM, we played a Valentine's matching game and played a Valentine's game where we practiced writing CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words.  The children LOVED placing on their special Valentines in their friend's boxes.

In reading, the essential questions have been What do things need to grow?  How do things change as they grow? and What grows on a farm?  The children have been invested in the topics, have great background knowledge, and are excited to share information.  The children are doing a great job sounding out words.  They are also doing very well saying all the sounds in a word when given a word out loud(beginning, middle, and end sound).  At this point, most students are ready to read simple books independently to you.  They have all the tools.  Please have them read to you as part of your daily 20 minutes of reading.  You can also have them find high frequency words in the books that you read to them.  We have learned I, can, the, we, see, a, like, to, and, go, you, do, my, are, he and with.  The children are now expected to read those words independently.  These are great words to practice at home.  

In writing, we have continued to research bears.  We have researched black bears and polar bears.  We have looked at books on those topics and done research online on the Pebblego site.  We research together and come up with 3 facts we learned and then the children draw a picture and write some of the facts.  The children are learning proper sentence formation.  All sentences start with a upper case letter, have spaces between words, and end with punctuation.  The children are getting more independent with writing.  We have also started the workbooks for letter formation from our new writing program.  The children work hard on forming the letters correctly(always start letters at the top) and placing the letters correctly on the line.  We use paper with a top and bottom line and a dotted middle line.  They are making "Star worthy" letters!

In math, we have learned the names of the coins and their worth.  We have been singing a song "Money in my pocket" to help.  They love it.  We will move to telling time by the hour soon.  All children are expected to identify their numbers to 100 and count to 100 by 1's and 10's and count backwards from 20.  We practice these skills regularly through song and movement.  Please practice at home too.  We continue to work with numbers, place value, patterns, graphing, and many other topics in various ways.

Outside play has been sporadic due to weather and playground conditions but please continue to send in all outdoor clothing daily. Please send your child with shoes or sneakers to change into from their boots(no slippers please) Please remember to send your child with at least 2 snacks and a drink daily and a water bottle.  

Classroom wish list items: disinfectant wipes to wipe down tables, little waters, and extra snacks.