This week has really flown by.  The children are working so hard and I am really proud of them.  Ms. Smith is doing a great job and has just settled right into our classroom. 

We are still working hard on the arrangements for Goldie’s funeral.  We hope to set a date and send out the announcements next week.  Look for more details to come soon.

Morning Meeting

During our morning meetings, we also work on letter recognition and calendar skills.  We do a chant in which the helper leads the class in spelling out the month.  While doing this, we talk about the order of the months, capital and lower-case letters and the situations when we them in writing. 

These are the Daily Data questions that we answered this week.

*Do you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

*What kind of shoes are you wearing?

*Are you 5 or 6 years old?

*What circus acts do you want to learn about first?

Shared Journals

The children have really worked hard in their journals.  They are becoming very good at questioning and negotiating.  I have seen an overall improvement in the pictures and writing that the children are doing.  Many of them have also begun using the Smart Board to electronically self-assess their journal writing!  Look for these self-assessments to come home in their January journals.

Theme

This week, we continued researching the history of the circus.  We learned that an English man, John Astley, created the circus ring.  His horse riding shows became the first circus like we know it.  Ask your child about John Astley’s circus.  I’ll bet that they can tell you much more!

We also decided that we would learn about animal acts first.  We will be researching the types of animal acts that are in the circus.  Then the children will decide which act to study.

Shared Reading

These are some of the books that we read this week.

What Would You Like?- With this book, we talked about the e marker.  An e marker is the e at the end of long vowel words.  We looked for these words and practiced sounding them out without the e marker to see how the vowel sounds changed.

Paper Party- We talked about all the things that could be made with paper and then made a web of the things we could make at art center.

10 For Dinner-This book is about a little girl who invites 10 guests over for her birthday.  On each page, the guests select the things that they want to do at the party.  We used this book to add up all of the different choices that were made.  We also talked about the different ways to solve these types of math problems.

Center Time

Today, the children and I talked about some of the things that we have been working on.  We were all amazed at the work that goes on at centers.  Here are the activities that we did at centers today!  Children were spotted writing and sending e-mails, writing books, making art projects, working in math journals, finishing journal entries from this morning, building ramps at science center, reading magazines, working on the computer, working on the Smart Board and adding pages to their Circus Fact Books!  As you can tell, our room is a very busy place during Center Time!!!!!!!!

Grace and Abby send an e-mail to Ms. Rahe’s class.  We are asking if we can borrow their tent for Goldie’s funeral.

Important dates & notes

Many of the children would like to e-mail you from time to time.  If you have an e-mail address and haven’t given it to me, please send it in.

Tuesday, Feb. 6 – Learning and Lunch

Thursday, Feb. 8 – School Pictures