Check out this article about what scientists say about the benefits of dancing in the classroom.  http://teacherpop.org/2015/01/science-says-your-classroom-needs-more-dance-parties/

We love our dance breaks.

December Happenings

Know it's a little late but after a busy holiday season, I'm finally getting around to sharing all of the fun we had.

Room 8 was definitely feeling the holiday spirit.  Reading holiday stories, learning about different holiday traditions, singing holiday songs, making presents, seeing the winter concert, and having a Polar Express pajama day, were just some of the many activities we enjoyed.   Of course, there was plenty of learning to go along with it.


One of my favorite stories to read around this time of year is Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett.  In this story, the Gingerbread baby loves living with Matty but he is lonely when Matty's not around and goes out to search for some friends.  While he is out having some adventures, we can see that Matty at home busy baking more gingerbread.  What a great surprise it is when the Gingerbread Baby comes home to find so many new friends.  it's such a sweet story and the illustrations are amazing.  The children really enjoyed it.  They then got a chance to make their own beautiful illustrations and write about why they liked the story.  I loved their details.

After learning about Chanukah, the children had fun playing the Dreidel game.

Our Polar Express Pajama Party was enjoyed by all.  What a fun, and comfy way to enjoy the last day of school before Winter Break.  We read the story, sequenced the events to help retell and then made our own Polar Express trains out of Graham Crackers.  Love the creativity.

Author Celebration/Popcorn party

During our Narrative Unit we spent a lot of time on the story Ira Sleeps Over which is about a boy who can't decide whether to take his beloved teddy bear on his first sleepover.  Ira is very worried throughout the story and keeps changing his mind about what to do, especially after his sister keeps teasing him.  He finally decides not to bring his teddy bear but then goes back home to get him after he sees that his friend has one of his own.  We took what we knew about Ira and wrote our own Ira stories  with a new problem. Using a familiar character was a great and fun way to try out some fiction writing.   Some of our stories were about Ira losing his teddy bear on an airplane, Ira being worried about the first day of school, and Ira being scared to go on a ride at Lake Compounce.   

 To celebrate all of our hard work on our stories,we had an author celebration with some freshly popped popcorn from an old fashioned hot air popper.  The children were so excited to see the popcorn start popping that they were practically popping out of their seats.

 Children were proud to share their stories with their friends.    I look forward to sharing them with all of you during conferences.

 

Thanksgiving Fun

I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday.  After spending weeks learning about The Mayflower, The Pilgrims, and what the holiday is all about, we were happy to celebrate with some delicious pie.  Thank you to everyone who donated pie and came in to help.  We are thankful for all your help in making our pie tasting event a success.  

Grace's mom printed out these great recording sheets.

Our 5 different kinds of pie.  No worries...the children did not get this much. 

Our results.  Chocolate was the big favorite.  Thank you to Addison's mom for the homemade chocolate pies.  

Friday Fun

Every week, students work together to earn enough happy faces to get a "Fun Friday" reward.  Rewards can be dance videos, games, an art project etc.  Last Friday, students were excited to come in to see they could play games with friends instead of doing their usual morning work.  They were all phonics and reading games but that didn't seem to make a difference to them.   Having these fun activities on a Friday is a great way to motivate everyone to work hard throughout the week and shows that you can have fun and learn at the same time.  That's the goal!

Veteran's Day

What a beautiful day to celebrate our Veterans.  Students were very excited to wear the red, white, and blue hats they made and show off their patriotism.  They sat very respectfully and listened as each Veteran was introduced and speeches were made. Mia was especially excited to have her mother honored and everyone thought it was very funny that one of the visiting Veterans was my Gym teacher when I was a kid (some of them were pretty taken aback to learn that I was actually a kid once too).  Hope everyone enjoyed the day off today.

"Weather or Not"

What an awesome program today from High Touch High Tech.  We had so much fun being scientists that I forgot to take pictures. Sorry.  Hopefully your children have told you all about it.  We learned about air pressure and what happens with high pressure meets low pressure.  We learned about condensation and how clouds form. We even made a cloud appear in our classroom.  We learned about lightening and explored static electricity.  Touching a lightening ball even made some children's' shoes light up.  Pretty cool!

We will continue learning about weather during science.  This week we will be observing clouds and learning about the different cloud types.  Next week we will be learning about wind speed and wind direction.  If you have a chance to watch a weather report on t.v. with your child, please do.  It will help   them with our weather vocabulary such as "fahrenheit", "meteorologist" and "air pressure".