Lots of learning!

Wow, another busy week full of learning and excitement!  With the excitement of the holiday's approaching, Jack our classroom elf has noticed a few behaviors that he and the big guy think we need to work on.  They would like us to focus on:

1) Following teacher directions the first time

2) When a teacher says "BEU", they need to say "I see you" and FREEZE and listen

3)Using kind words towards our friends

Any extra reminders you can give daily at home on these 3 areas would be wonderful!  

Reindeer Cam-we have been checking in on Santa's reindeer at the North Pole every day this week at www.reindeercam.com  We haven't seen Santa come out to feed them yet, but have seen several reindeer and lots of snow!  Check it out at home!  The kids love it!  You can even add their name to "the nice list" that you will see at the bottom of the screen if you wish!  

A look at our learning this week...

Fundations-I forgot to send home the weekly packets last week so it is pretty big this week.  However, I encourage you to read through it and try the activities at home a few nights each week.  We are now getting into "tapping words" to help us read and write and the more you practice at home, the further along your child will progress in their reading and writing at school.

Shared Reading/Spelling-To help us learn our new spelling words, on and we, we read the books The Sandwich, We Make Cookies, and Games We Play.  We are becoming wonderful readers and add many books to our read to self book boxes each week!  

Next weeks spelling words: yes, no

Daily 5/Guided Reading Groups: We have a few more new center choices to work on at Daily 5.  

 Mix & Fix: we draw a card with a spelling word on it and use magnets to correctly spell the word.  We then record it on a recording sheet that you might find in your child's Friday Folder if they went to this center this week.

Roll A Sight Word: this is updated weekly with our 2 newest spelling words and then a few review words.  They play with a partner and take turns rolling dice.  Whatever number they roll is the spelling word they practice writing.

While the kiddos are at their Daily 5 centers I am pulling groups to read.  Ask your child who is in their guided reading group and what books they learned how to read this week.  We are learning to point to the words when we read, look at the picture when we are stuck on a tricky word and "tap out" or sound out unknown words.  If we try all 3 things and are still stuck, I will always help them.  When reading at home, please prompt your child to try those strategies when reading.  They tend to appeal to adults and just want to be told the words, rather than try.  Make them try!

Writing Workshop-ask your child to tell you about the spaceman sticks that help us put word spaces between our words when writing!

Math-we are becoming teen experts!!  I am excited to wrap up this unit next week and begin a unit on non-standard measurement when we return from winter break!

Makerspace Friday- Mrs. Fitch had her 2nd Makerspace Friday today! Makerspace Friday's focus on STEM activities (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)  Since our class loved the Ozobots so much from a few weeks ago, she got those out and introduced them to all classes that signed up.  Since our class was the "Ozobot experts" in the building we were able to make paths and codes to have Ozobot races.  We divided up into teams to make racetracks for our Ozobots and then went around to see whose went the fastest!  Zara, Bradlen and Ellie's group made the fastest track!  Ask your child to tell you all about it!  If you need a reminder as to what Ozobots are you can search back in the blog posts from early November where I provided a more detailed explanation.