What's happening in room 302?

A look at our learning this week...

Fundations: we learned the lowercase letters a and g.  

Please use the following verbal prompts when practicing at home:

a: over, around, down (NOT circle, stick)

g: over, around, dow...n, curve up (NOT circle, stick with a tail)

We are really focusing on writing our letters, rather than drawing them.  When they form their lowercase letters with a circle and a stick, that is drawing.  Writing is using the natural path of movement like the verbal prompts above.  Watch your child at home and see if they are drawing their letters or writing them.  

We also worked on generating rhyme.  This was tricky for the kiddos.  Often at this age they are good at hearing rhyme, but generating it can be more difficult.  Many were confused between beginning sounds (they were thinking bed and bat rhymed because they both began with b) rather than the ending chunk of the word is what makes them rhyme.  This is something easy you could practice at home.  You could do it verbally or write it down so they can actually see the part that makes them rhyme, like we did below.  You could say "tell me a word or words that rhyme with cake, make, take."  They could say things such as "fake, shake, bake, etc."  

Shared Reading: we learned our first two word wall words this week!  Word wall words are similar to what you probably called spelling words growing up.  They are common words we will use when reading and writing and are important words we need to know.  This week we learned that a can be a letter (like we learned above in fundations) or it can also be a word by itself.  We added the word a to our word wall.  We also learned that I can be a letter or a word.  We learned that when I is alone, it must always be uppercase.  Both of these words were added to our word wall.  

We read a book called Autumn that featured our new word wall words.  They have their own copies of the book in their book boxes to read during other parts of our day.  

Writing Workshop: Check out how focused your little ones are during our daily writing time!  I have a class full of kiddos who truly love writing!  It is so wonderful to see!

Below they are sharing their writing with their "turn and talk buddy" at their tables. 

Ask your child what they wrote about this week.  We write about real things we have done.

Math: this week we played "Top it" with dot cards, learned more about triangles, worked on counting and played a game called "Pocket Problems."  Check out your child's Friday Folder for directions on how to play this game at home.

In the pictures below they are searching for triangles in magazines and playing "Top it" with a friend.

3rd grade buddies: on Thursday we went to visit our 3rd grade buddies in Mrs. Freese's class.  We went during their reading time, our snack time, so they read to us while we ate  We love getting together with our special friends!

Friday Craft: today we read the book A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni.  This is a sweet tale of a little chameleon who is looking for one color to stay all of the time, but keeps running into the problem that chameleons change color.  In the end, he ends up finding a chameleon friend to always be with so they can at least always change together.  This book helped us talk about friendships and how each one of us is special and unique.  
We then talked about how Leo Lionni uses pastels and water colors to illustrate his pictures.  We also used crayons and water colors to make our own chameleons full of beautiful colors.  These will come home next week after they have had time to dry.

Ms. Sarah, a Phase 1 student from the Mizzou Elementary Education program, was here to help us with the craft.  She will be with us at least once a week for a few hours each time during this semester.  

Fall Nature Walk: On Monday, the first day of Fall, we took a nature scavenger hunt.  We found several signs of Fall outside!

Reading Buddies: On Tuesday, during our library check out time, Mrs. Fitch and Mrs. Canepa introduced us to their reading buddies.  We are excited to be able to cuddle up with a buddy after we check out a book!  We also have reading buddies in our classroom library.

More fun at school!