Hat Day

Today was Hat Day at school! The kids came with great hats! They were even focused still:

We created a graph about our hats. The students drew a picture of their hat on a sticky note. Then I had them put them into categories and give the categories a title. They did a wonderful job!

Of course we had to take pictures of us in our hats.

A silly one too!

We studied all about shadows this week, but didn't have enough sun at the right times to get some pictures. Shadow pictures to come next week! (Fingers crossed!)

Group Penguin Reports

This week we had school wide-DIBELS testing, which meant a week off from reading groups. We spent that time researching penguins in small groups.

First we talked about what group work was. (I forgot to take a picture of our anchor chart, so here is what I can remember!) They came up with this definition:

Groups of people working together to get something done.

We talked about what a good group member was. They came up with:
- kind
- respectful
- helpful
- doesn't leave others behind
- puts things in the middle
- shares

We learned what it mean to COMPROMISE. We said we could do one of these things when we needed to compromise:
- Take turns using ideas.
- Use part of both people's ideas.
- Vote.

They did an amazing job working together! I was so impressed!

Here are some adorable pictures of them working together as groups:

This next week they will share their penguin reports with their classmates. I can't wait to see how they all do!

Writing Like Laura Numeroff

Laura Numeroff is one of my favorite children's book authors. The week before winter break we read A LOT of stories she wrote. Below are some of the titles we read:

Her books are catchy, funny and teach kids a wonderful writing style. Students quickly caught on to her patterns and identified these rules to follow if we were to write a story like Laura Numeroff.

• The title should start with "If you give..."
• She has one animal and one girl or boy in each story.
• The first letter of the food, should have the same first letter as the animal.
• It always ends with "and chances are..." and connects back to the first thing you gave the animal.
• One thing leads to another. 

They wrote a wonderful story (I only took notes and typed it up. They really wrote it all by themselves!) and illustrated it. It is now bound in our classroom. Feel free to come and check it out! Below is each page of the story:

What A Month!!

Phew! We made it to Christmas Break! (Although it feels like this is the start of Christmas Break #2 this year.) Our ONLY full week in December was a fantastic week. (Dec. 2-5) The students returned after Thanksgiving Break ready to go. I was so impressed with how well they did after a week off for Thanksgiving! We worked hard as we began to make our Christmas gifts for parents, create our holiday art projects and learn how to hook you reader when you write! Ask your child to tell you about the 4 types of hooks! (Question, Sound, Exclamation and Word Picture)

On Friday of that first week we awoke to a beautiful white view. I don't think any of us could have expected that much snow! It was a bonus that it fell on a no school day! As we all know that snow unfortunately stuck around a LONG time causing us to miss several school days. I was so sad that we missed an entire week and our field trip, but was so glad everyone was safe at home. I enjoyed seeing kids having fun outside and especially enjoyed watching the 1st and 2nd grade basketball teams play each other that week.

Knowing we only had 4 days left until Christmas Break, my team teachers and I worked hard to figure out how to fit 2 weeks into 1 week. (Or at least as much as we could!) Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we worked HARD! The students amazed me as we all worked as a team to fit everything in. Wednesday night when we got the call that school was to be cancelled Thursday, I was so thankful we had worked so hard earlier in the week, but was SO sad I wasn't going to get to say Merry Christmas and goodbye to my students. Plus, they didn't have their gifts for parents or gifts for me! My team-teachers and I decided we would spend Thursday delivering the gifts to our students! It was such a blessing to deliver those today. The shocked faces of kids in jammies and smiles on their faces made our deliveries that much better! I hope that all of you have a wonderful Christmas Break.

During our first week the students had planned to create a post about our Christmas art project. Below are pictures from this project and words from the students.

"We love doing tissue paper art!"

"I love tissue paper art!"

"We love our things!"

"We liked doing it!"

"We like doing the hands and the hat."

"We like our snowmen and wreaths when they're done with all the stuff."

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!