What Have the 1M Owls Been Up To?

Thank you so much to our fabulous class parents and parent volunteers for making the Thanksgiving Feast so special for the children. The children and I truly appreciated it. I am so thankful to be able to work with such wonderful children and their parents.

Reading

In Reading we finished up our short vowels unit. We worked on short vowel word families and we played some fun games(one example was Squish!) with nonsense words to reinforce the short vowel sounds. We also worked on l and r blends. We started the long a sound this week and learned all about Bossy E!We have been working on retelling a story using the 5 W's, asking questions, and identifying character traits. The children have been working on these skills in Literacy Centers, Independently, and in Guided Reading Groups. We have also been having a blast learning how to read with expression.We learned that good readers make their reading sound like talk. We learned to use punctuation cues, proper pacing, and quotation marks to help us read with expression. We also learned to use changes in print(bold, italics, etc.) to help us read with expression.

In Math, we have been working on fact families, adding three numbers, doubles and doubles plus one, and using function machines. We also played some fun games to reinforce these concepts.

In Science, we did a fun experiment with the wind using bubbles. We wanted to see which direction our bubbles would go if we blew bubbles in a few different places... Ask your child all about it!

In an area with three walls surrounding us...

Here we are under an awning at the LS entrance.

On an open path

In Science we have been discussing how people and animals get ready for the winter.  We focused on migration this week and learned about different animals that migrate. We read an interesting book about reindeer and wrote our own reindeer fact books. We also made reindeer glyphs. This week we will learn about animals that hibernate.

We have been learning about different holidays that are celebrated in December. This week we did a fun activity with 1J. We mixed up both classes and Mrs. Jacobson read the children a Hannukah story and taught the children to play the dreidel game and I read the story An Early American Christmas and we made wreaths. Then we flip flopped! It was fun.

Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Carberry collaborated and did a wonderful project with the first grade. They listened to the Eric Carle book The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse and then they created artwork in the style of Eric Carle and recited a line about their artwork in Spanish. Check out Mrs. Howard's and Mrs. Carberry's blogs to see more pictures and a video.

 The authors and illustrators in Class 1M have been busy publishing our first books! We will have a Publishing Party in January. Stay tuned!

Publishing

Hard at work writing

Here are a few reminders for the week...
** Our Holiday Party will be on Wednesday, 12/14 in B6 from 11 to 2. All parents are welcome to attend.
** Friday, 12/16 is the Lower School Winter Concert. Please have your child come dressed up in their Holiday attire. The concert starts at 11:00 a.m. and dismissal will be after the concert at 12:00.