Happy Valentine’s Day!  We had a great time at our party Tuesday morning.  Thank you to everyone who sent in food and goodies.  Also, thank you so much to everyone who gave Miss Pettey and I something! 

Centers

This week, we have had a lot of things going on during center time.  First of all, the Home Living Center has turned into a Vet’s office.  The children even made sign-in sheets and dollar bills so that they could do the paperwork and pay like you do at a real vet’s office.  I took some pictures and will be adding them to the web page under the Center’s link.

We have also been working on a Valentine candy graph for our math journals, adding pages to our USA fact books and doing our research on New York City.

Shared Reading

This week, we read books by the author Pat Hutchins.  With these books, we worked on onomatopoeia (sound effect words like “bam”) and the sn, ch and fr blends/diagraphs.  We also made 2 class bag books where the children brainstormed items that began with these blended sounds. 

Math

A new math journal page was added to our journals.  On this page, the children sorted and graphed the color of sweet heart Valentine candy they received.  After creating their graphs, they used the information to decide which color they had the most and least of. 

Theme

New York City has tons of great things to learn about!  Each day at centers, the children have been researching things in the city.  Did you know that the Statue of Liberty is made out of copper and was originally brown?  Or that in 1945 a plane got lost in the fog and flew into the Empire State Building? 

Next week, we will negotiate and decide what New York attraction we will build.

Shared Journal

Wow!!! That is all I can say about Shared Journals this week.  The children have really bloomed.  I wish you could come and see this process.  After listening to them share, ask and answer question and negotiate which story should be chosen, you would forget that they were only 5 & 6 years old.  If that wasn’t enough, their writing is really maturing.  Everyone has made huge improvements in their ability to segment and represent the sounds in words.  It has been a great week in journals!

Important Dates and Notes:

·        I just wanted to remind everyone that we have a student who is VERY allergic to nuts.  During the Valentine party, this child touched something to his skin that contained traces of peanut oil and had to go home due to the severe and immediate reaction he had.  Please, please, please be careful when packing your child’s lunch to make sure that peanut products are avoided.

·        Remember to send in an excuse when you child is absent!!!

·        We need PVC pipe for our upcoming building project.  If you would like to donate some to our class, please let me know.

·        Monday, February 20 – No School

·        Friday, February 24 - Celebration

scenes from the Valentine party