Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation. Getting back into a schedule is always difficult. The children seem very happy to be back at school.

We started the New Year with new calendar notebooks. Each morning we use our personal notebooks to record the day of the week and the number of the day. We also practice how to write and spell the number of the day. We sing a song every morning that helps the children learn how to spell the number words one-ten. We also practice counting by one’s to 100, by two’s to 24, by three’s to 36, four’s to 48 and five’s to100. These are great skills to practice in the car.
In Literacy: We read “The Snowy Day”. The story is about a little boy, Peter, who awakens one morning and finds snow has fallen during the night. His adventures in the snow include making tracks with his boots, climbing Snow Mountains, and having snow “plop” on his head. The story led to a class discussion on weather
and different activities we might do depending on the type on weather. As a follow-up to the discussion children then created their own individual charts to tell what they like to do on different kinds of days; rainy days, sunny days, and snowy days. I am really amazed at how well the children could express themselves. They thought of so many fun things to do!
Next week we will begin our small book groups! Each child will be reading their own book and completing activities for the book they are studying. I am looking forward to sharing this with you at conference time.
In Math: We have had so much fun with the nursery rhyme “One Two Buckle my Shoe”. We are making patterns, spelling number words, reinforcing number recognition, sorting by attributes, and making up addition and subtraction problems. Next week we will begin working on fact families.
Buddies: The kids were so excited to meet with their older buddies after the holiday break. With our buddies we worked on vocabulary words that described the cold climate of Antarctica.
With our little buddies (Tulie’s) class we had our holiday party we missed because of snow day. It was so much fun. Next week we will begin a unit on “The Three Little Pigs”. We are going to introduce the children to different versions of the story.