Sunday, September 26, 2010

Apples, Apples, Apples!

Our theme for this past week was APPLES!  We introduced the apple theme by working with our short a sound and making the apple shape book with the short a pictures inside.  Our centers were all apple themed also.

 apple trees and centers 004apple trees and centers 007

They listened to the story Apples, Apples, Apples, and then played a game called “Rotten Apple”.  This game had our vocabulary words on it. They drew a card and read the word on the card, If they knew the word they got to keep the card. If they drew a card with an apple with a worm in it, they had to call out “Rotten Apple!” and they lost all the cards they had collected.  They had a lot of fun playing this game.

apple trees and centers 005

This game was Rhyming with Johnny Appleseed. They found rhyming pairs of short a words. 

apple trees and centers 006

At this center they ordered numbered apples from least to greatest.

apple trees and centers 002

Students drew cards with math facts on them and used counters to join sets to find the sum for the game Apple Addition.

apple trees and centers 001

This center was geared towards handwriting. They copied a poem using their neatest handwriting using their lines and spaces and then illustrated the poem.

 apples 002apples 009

During one of our desk jobs the students made a shape book called All About Apples.

apples 008

Labeling the parts of an apple was an art job we did during our center desk job.

apple trees and centers 009  apple trees and centers 010 apple trees and centers 011

Another desk job during centers was making these torn apple trees.

Happy Apple Men 001Happy Apple Men 003Happy Apple Men 002

These are our “Happy Apple Men”!  They are proud of their art jobs!

apples 003apples 010

We combined our apple theme with a few math lessons also.  On the promethean we worked on ordering 2 numbers from least to greatest and then did 3 numbers and then 4 numbers in order from least to greatest.

We also read a Dr. Seuss story Ten Apples Up on Top and then did a math activity on the promethean where the students were pictured with apples up on top.  They had to figure out the combination of red and green apples “up on top”.

apples 006apples 007

After doing the activity on the promethean we went back to our desks and rolled red and green dice to make combinations of our own and put them in a book of our classmates pictures called “How Many Apples Up On Top"?”

apples 004 apples 005

         Seasons of An Apple Tree 004

The last activity we did was read the story The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree. We then painted our own seasons of an apple tree.

 Seasons of An Apple Tree 002 Seasons of An Apple Tree 003  

As you can see this was a busy week of Apples, Apples, Apples!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Welcome to Maize Elementary & Conferences

It was a pleasure getting a chance to meet with each of you at our conferences last week.  The kids were excited to show off their portfolio of writing samples and assessments that we have worked on so far this year.  Thanks for all you do to help support what we do here at school and thanks for sharing your sweet children with me too! 

Conference folders

Learning Our Short Vowel Sounds!

For the past few weeks we have worked hard to learn the short vowel sounds of “a” like in apple and short “i” like in pig. We have done a lot of word building and decoding of short a and short i words. We made short a apple shape books with pictures and words that have the short a sound and a short i pig book with pictures and words that make the short i sound.  Next week we will introduce short o.

 apples 001short i pigs

Shake the Beans!

We have spent the past week working on combinations of 6, 7, 8, and 9 and learning how to read addition sentences.  We played the game “Shake the Beans” where we shook two sided beans and wrote the facts on a chart showing each combination for the number we were working on.  They really enjoyed the game and worked with partners to show their problems.

shake the beans 008 shake the beans 001 shake the beans 002 shake the beans 003 shake the beans 004 shake the beans 005 shake the beans 006 shake the beans 007

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Potluck!

We ended our ABC week with a fun story called Potluck.  It is about twins named Alpha and Betty that invite their friends from A-Z to a potluck.  Each child brings something that begins like the first letter of their name.  It was a lot of fun eating our way from A-Z!  For some reason I lost the pictures when I downloaded them to my computer, so I made a list for you to see what the kids brought. The kids also made a class book about our potluck that will be out for you to view at conferences next week.  Thanks for making learning so much fun and for sending the items to share with the class! I am sorry the pictures didn’t turn out!

 what we brought to potluck

Potluck Food Pic2

Friday, September 10, 2010

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! Look what we do in our room!

ABC week has been a lot of fun. We have read and ate our way from A-Z! We enjoyed the story Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and then made our own name trees.

ABC week 009

We read the story Dr. Seuss’ ABC and made our own class book that we hope you will come and see next week at conferences.

ABC week 022

Here is a look at some of our short a and ABC centers:

ABC week 010 ABC week 011

At this center the kids rolled a cube with short a words on it and earned pieces to make these short a cats.

ABC week 001 

Here they had to build short a words and “Paint the Words”.

ABC week 002

At guided reading we used the –at –an and –am word families to build short a words.

ABC week 004 ABC week 003

Learning to write complete sentences with capital letters and periods was another center we had this week using our sight words and color words.

ABC week 005 ABC week 006

At this center the kids had to sort the picture cards that were missing their beginning sound and write the words from A to Z!  They sure work hard at centers!  It has been another fun filled week!

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

ABC Week!

This week we are celebrating the mastery of all of our letters and sounds from our Back to School Theme.  We are using the alphabet to do a lot of reading, writing, and creating  from A to Z!  Here are some websites to play some fun ABC games.

                                      (Click on the pictures to play games on these websites)

starfall between the lionsclifford

                      abcya abc match

I will be posting more pictures of our ABC Week soon! 

                  *Special thanks to Mrs. Bumgardner for sharing these websites and ideas of these games!!