Our Wonderful First Weekst Together

This creation, made by one of the children on the first day of school, sums it up pretty well for me.  I walk into our classroom feeling such a deep joy and gratitude to have the privilege of spending the day with a beautiful classroom of amazing children within a school of incredible teachers and parents.  I have so enjoyed getting to know each and everyone of our new friends and creating our beautiful classroom community together.  It is going to be (and is!) such a spectacular year and I want it to slow down so we can relish all our moments together!  It's already October!!


Math
I just love the energy and bustle of busy kiddos working hard on their math!  In our classroom, we work together practicing facts with math games, play with a partner as we learn a new concept, work independently on individual work, and work in small groups as we receive instruction on something new.  There's a lot going on!



First days of school making "Getting to Know You" graphs with partners

Our focus these first weeks have been developing our number sense and this looks differently depending on the child.  Some are working with the hundreds chart and comparing single digit or double digit numbers using math vocabulary (greater than or less than and our new math symbol - the hungry alligator!).  Others are working with numbers in the thousands and practicing rounding numbers to the nearest tens or hundreds.  Some are working on adding single digits by counting on while others are reviewing their regrouping of tens and hundreds when adding four-digit numbers. And others are working using strategy and logic to create math equations that lead them to as close to 100.  Phew! Like I said, there is a lot going on!

Literacy
Writing Workshop is one of our many favorite times of day.  We enjoyed reading and writing like our mentor author Todd Parr.  Be sure to check out our class book and our individual books in our class library that are in his style.  Todd Parr's style continues to inspire some of us during Writing Workshop while others have been inspired to write their own books in their own styles, which is great!  We try on different styles see how they feel for us, learn from their expertise and take with us pieces that will help us develop our own style.

We are getting in the flow of our centers which happen on Mondays and Wednesdays.  The kids have been so great about cleaning their spaces when they move onto to the next center and going with the flow.  We have practice many of the centers that we will do this year so now we can really get deep into content for each child. Yay!  We have practiced Word Sorts, Read to Someone, Word Ladders,  Handwriting, and how to do Word Games.

Reading Workshop
We have been practicing filling our book boxes with books that are "just right" for us and will help us practice our reading ang grow into stronger readers.  We then spend some individual time reading our books, sometimes we read them many times to help us get stronger and grow our fluency.  The kids are growing everyday in picking a quiet spot with their books and getting right to reading while I meet with individual children. We LOVE reading!!

Buddy reading with our younger friends

Theme
Our theme time has been focus on our community agreements, friendships, and communication.  We have had help from the older class that introduced our Giraffe talk to us and we have been practicing in our own class (with the help of Crow and Wolf).  We spent time identifying many feelings and how they really feel inside our body and how our body looks.  We have talked about how to make an observation, state our feelings, and the requests we can make. 

Our biggest focus has been on what friendships is, what it looks like, and the importance of  kindness, compassion, taking responsibility for mistakes, and forgiveness. We will continue to work on our Giraffe talk all year (and Giraffe listening!) and incorporate identifying our needs in our message to friends.

As you may have heard, this year our theme is "A Place in Time."  Together we will build our school time machine and it will be a surprise to all as to where the machine will take us...stay tuned!!  Last week the kids collaboratively drew designs for time machines (check them out on the wall between our class and Becky's class).  This week construction will begin and Thursday we will be exploring some other place or event in time!! Exciting!!

Field Trip
Check out these sweet advocates of peace!

International Day of Peace

With the number of honks, waves and smiles, I can safely say that our first field trip was a complete success!  The kids were amazing as we stood downtown with our peace doves and signs spreading peace to all.  And then, chanting peace as we walked through town, way to go OCS kiddos!  You rock!

Oh...Giraffes CAN dance!  We loved this book and the message of believing in yourself and trusting in your abilities.  Yay!