The Mitten and The Hat

We love stories by Jan Brett and we love her peek a book pictures! After reading several different versions of The Mitten we compared and contrasted each of the stories. We then added in Jan Brett’s The Hat and compared it with her story The Mitten. We did a chart to show how the stories were alike and different. Here is a look at what we came up with.

All of our centers were mitten themed also…I didn’t get pictures…trying to play catch up from our snow days and I forgot! We had some fun centers this week too. The kids really liked them. We had a Chilly Phonics Challenge where they built real and nonsense words. They played Mitten Bingo where they created number sentences using a + and – die. They worked on place value mitten match. They did a sentence scramble using sentences about the story The Mitten where they had to make a complete sentence and write them with correct mechanics. They listened to the story The Mitten at our listening center and then sequenced the story events. They put winter words in ABC order and put them in a mitten shape in order. Overall a great week at centers. They always work hard!

Fun With Jan Brett!

This week we will enjoy several more stories by Jan Brett. The kids love her “peek a boo” pictures. Here is a website you can go to and enjoy a lot of activities from the stories written by Jan Brett.

Click on the picture to go to Jan Brett’s website and find coloring pages and activities to go with all of her neat stories!

Welcome Winter!

We got back to the new year with several cute snowmen stories to go with our theme this week. They are hoping to make one of their own snowmen soon! (It is actually snowing right now as I post this…so we may get our wish!) We decorated our room with these cute star snowmen. The kids do such a great job with our art jobs. They LOVE art!!

Here are some favorite snowmen books to get us thinking about SNOW!!

 

We made these snowmen folders to use as a portfolio to hold all of our work we did this last nine weeks. I hope they shared all their assessments and writing samples that were used to do our grading this nine weeks. They should be very proud of their progress! I am very excited about the growth I am seeing in our classroom!!Grades will be posted January 10.

Happy New Year! Welcome Back to School!

After a groggy first day back after the new year we bounced back into routine very well. They have worked hard and are becoming more and more independent! We welcomed our new season of winter with some winter centers and some fun snowman stories. Here is some of the fun and hard work that we did this week:

This center was called Snowball Bingo. They got to roll a cool die with a die inside a die. They also rolled a + or – cube and then generated number sentences to go with the numbers they rolled. They had to know how to complete a subtraction problem using the largest number first and subtract the smaller number rolled. After they got their answers they got to cover their bingo board.

 

At this center they problem solved and covered a snowman with pattern blocks. Then graphed the number of pattern blocks they used for their pictures. Then they played Snowman Turndown. They had numbers 0-5 on cards. They rolled a die and then they tried to make two numbers that added up to the number they rolled on their die. If they could do this they turned over those two numbers and a snowman was on the other side. They worked hard to see what combinations they could make and who could get the most Snowmen turned over.

Everyday at calendar we sing our money song and work on recognizing coins and learning their values. At this center they got to add pennies, nickels, and dimes to find out how much money each snowman had.

Here they used winter words and put them into ABC order. They also had to work on putting words that started with the same letter in ABC order. We have worked hard recognizing they had to go to the 2nd letter to decided which word would come first.

Our sentence scrambles got a new challenge for the kids in the new year. There were no words that had capitals and no punctuation marks, so they had to figure out the order of the sentence and if it was a telling sentence or asking sentence. Then they wrote them correctly with all the mechanics needed. They did a very good job!

Merry Christmas Families!

Here is a look at the parent gifts that we made. They were very proud of their work. I hope you were able to find a frame to fit your beautiful picture!

Merry Christmas families!

Polar Express Day

We decided that everyone loves the book The Polar Express! We celebrated our last day of school before break doing several activities to integrate learning from this book. First of all we got to wear our PJ’s to school and pretend we were on the Polar Express. We listened to the story and then sequenced story events and put them into a cute Polar Express train art we made.

 

We also got to make necklaces with silver bells on them to help them remember to “believe” in the spirit of Christmas. While we were busy making our necklaces we had some chocolate milk and donuts as a treat from Mrs. Schmelzer and got a new book and bookmark from her also. Then we got to go to our all school sing a long and had a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Claus!  Merry Christmas!!