Last week of quarter 2!

Reading
We are reading The House that Tony Lives in. It is about how a home is built. We are still focusing on homes, specifically how they are made.

Writing
Students will be making a book about their home for an end of the quarter assessment. These books will be sent home the following week.

Math
Solid (3D) shapes and flat (2D) shapes

Phonics
Long and short vowel sounds

Social Studies
How homes are built and why are homes different.

Mr. E

MLK week

Reading
We are featuring two books this week. Both about tools and building to go along with our unit on homes. We are reading a funny rhyming book called Fix-it Duck and a sing-a-long book called Old MacDonald had a Woodshed. We will be comparing the two books and making them come to life more through visualizing and some dramatic play. Students will get a chance to touch some building materials and some tools as well as read in our 'new' library we built on Friday.

Writing
We are writing about our feelings during writing time. I am also introducing the students to describing words this week and we are going to start using more describing words when we write. Please encourage this at home. (i.e. The house is big. or The big, white house on the corner has a pretty, red door.)

Math
Reviewing skills and number writing to 20. Practice writing the teen numbers at home if you see your child is having trouble writing them correctly.

Social Studies
What are homes built with? Feelings. MLK.

Science
How tools work.

The students' are loving the homes unit thus far. Please keep talking about it at home and MAKING CONNECTIONS.

Mr. E

P.S. Encourage other parents in the classroom to read the blog. Tell them they are missing out.

January 14-18

Reading

We are starting a new mini-unit tomorrow. We wrapped up our animal homes unit and we will now be focusing on homes around the world. This week I will intro it with our book of the week Homes Around the World. During this unit we will be learning about homes, shelter, cultures and material used to build. We are continuing to work on comprehension skills like making connections, visualizing and predicting. I will also be teaching students ways to read difficult/new words. 

Phonics

Review of long and short e sounds and intro to long and short u.

Writing

We are writing about animals we know and continuing to work on writing sentences correctly (capital, spaces, ending punctuation, one idea).

Math

Numbers to 20. Ten-frames. Comparing and ordering numbers. Number riddles.

Social Studies

Homes and people around the world. Geography. Martin Luther King.

Other stuff:

I am still collecting boxes for building homes at the end of this unit. 

The first three chaperons that email me can come on the field trip to Kohls Children's Museum on Friday, February 8th for free and all others are welcome at $6.50.

Mr. E

Ten frames

I am sending home laminated ten frames today. These are tools that we use to help count and see the importance of ten. We will be using these over the next month or so with adding and subtracting too. Keep it at home and use it with your child to help them understand the concept of ten. They should not count them individually because they know when it is full there are always ten. If one is empty they know it is one less than nine. If they are all full and there is one more outside then they know it is 11. This is how it is used. Get them used to using it.

Thanks,
Mr. E

January 7-11

We are getting back into the swing of things this week.

Reading
Our book for this week is called Building Beavers. We will be learning about beavers and where they live. We are continuing to focus on the question: What is shelter and why is it important? This is our last week learning about animal homes as we move to human homes next week.

Writing
Tomorrow we are making a book about our classroom resolutions for 2013. These are basically rules/procedures that we/I was getting a little lax on enforcing in December. So now we are all reminding ourselves of things we need to do better in school. Please read over this book with your child. We will also be writing about our friends on Wednesday. You can be in conversation about your child's friends over the week to get them thinking and writing more with more detail!

Math
We are learning numbers to 20. This is an important week because the teens are the toughest numbers for students to memorize and write. We will be starting to use ten frames to help learn the concept of composing and decomposing numbers (the number 12 is made by 10 and 2). I will hopefully be sending home ten frames for your child to practice with at home.

Social Studies
Being friends

Science
Beavers building

Phonics
long e and short e sounds (long e= tree, short e= bed)

We will be having a spelling test on Friday. I will send the list home tomorrow I hope. Spelling tests are nothing to stress out about. Just getting your child used to word families and spelling tests that they will take in first grade. Have fun with them and please don't put pressure on your child when practicing/taking them.

Mr. E