Castles, word families and pumpkins!

Wow!  As I have been preparing for conferences I am blown away by the growth each and every child has made in our short time together!  From feeling confident to sounding out words and write independently to taking the risks of trying out new books or tackling harder ones, these kids are incredible!  We have grown so much as a class, too, by becoming more comfortable and graceful in our daily and weekly routines, being mindful of our friends needs during work time, sharing space with one another and knowing our weekly jobs.  There is such sweetness, love and care with each other and it just keeps growing and growing!  Yum! 

It has also been quite delicious meeting with each child and talking about how they want to grow in the areas of math, reading, writing, and personally.  I love the reflection and thought the children invest in creating goals that are important to them that empower them to really be involved in their learning and growth at school.  It is such a meaningful process and I look forward meeting with all of you this week!

Math
We have been lots of different math games to help us learn our math facts!  Some are working on their addition math facts and playing games like The Spiral Game or BINGO.  We are also learning different strategies to help us solve addition problems.  We are going over our doubles, getting those solid and then we will see how handy they are when figuring out other math problems.  Yay, for doubles!!

Others are doing a bit of algebra and playing Psychic Math to practice finding the missing addend.  Others are practicing adding ones and tens and playing Race to a Flat to begin the process of regrouping groups of ten (here we come carrying!).  Others are practicing adding BIG numbers and looking for number palindromes and seeing how many times they need to add a number before they get one.  Some take 8 steps!  For example, take 21.  Add the reverse 12 and we get 33 - a palindrome that took one step.  Some are also working on there multiplication math facts and playing games to help them learn those facts.

Literacy
We are expert word sorters!  We have begun our wall of word families to record the spelling patterns we have visited.  There are several groups happening in our class. Some continue with their baby vowels, others are playing with magic e (time for the babies to say their grown up name!), and others are going over crazy "r" (er, ir, ar). 

In Writing Workshop, there are so many stories happening!  Some kids have been inspired by our theme to write stories of castles, princesses and queens.  Others are writing about Halloween and jack-o-lanterns.  And some are writing stories about owls, angry birds, or giants.  We have begun our wall of helpful words that kids can pull off, bring to their seat and use in their writing. These words related to our theme or the season and there are a few sentence starters, too.  So handy when we have a tricky word that we plan to write many times throughout our story.  Author's chair is a favorite time at the end of Writing Workshop.  We are taking turns having an opportunity to choose a recent book we have written and read it to the class.  So exciting!!

In reading workshop, we continue to be strong, dedicated readers.  We are learning strategies to help our comprehension.  Wolfie (our stuffed little wolf that likes to help during Reading Workshop) share with us out so retell a story.  After he taught us how to do it, he then got to visit kids who finished a book and were ready to retell their story.  Wow, I don't know who love it more, me (I mean Wolfie) or the kids - there was such excitement to read and retell.  Thanks Wolfie for all your help and inspiration!

Theme
Castles!  Kings and Queens!  Peasants!  We have spent our time in the Middle Ages exploring castles  and asking ourselves questions.  Why did they build them? Why did they stop building them? What are the different parts? Who built them? How did they live in them? Who lived in them?  How long did it take to build? We have REALLY enjoyed learning how to draw castles.  Please keep your eye out for these careful drawings (there is some amazing brickwork!).

We also learned that you really didn't get to choose what you wanted to do during the Middle Ages.  We learned about the feudal system and some of the different work people did.  We did have fun pretending to choose the job we would like!

And I can't forget the clothing!  We learned about the different clothes worn depending on who you were.  We were tickled by the idea of how much royalty loved to wear color - often the right side of their clothing would be one color and the left side a different color.  Their shoes, too!  We had fun coloring and designing their outfit on paper dolls.

Field Trip
Oh, the pumpkin patch! 

Also, follow these links to Jen's updates on the building or our time machine and digging potatoes for the food bank!

Can You Dig It?

Today we helped out in the garden, and harvested potatoes for the food bank. 












We learned how to dig from the side.

 Then we really got our fingers in the dirt!

 Kids dug...

 teachers, too...

we really wanted to fill those baskets!

It's a good thing some of the potatoes were so big!

 

We worked together to find as many of the potatoes as we could. 

 

Wow, we sure dug a lot of potatoes!

Teamwork brings home the wheelbarrow.

What a great way to prepare for our future community service at the Food Bank later on in the year!  I was impressed with how hard the kids worked and how enthusiastically they searched for the potatoes in the dirt.  

We did experience a bit of unwanted excitement when some kids found a wasp nest, yikes!  Fortunately, despite a few scary stings, most of the children managed to avoid the wasps.  Those who were stung were taken care of quickly, phew!  Thanks to everyone who helped out with digging AND with the wasps!

WHEN are we?

It's the middle of October and the rain has finally come!  Yesterday was our first rainy day recess and we bundled up in our brightly colored raincoats and boots and headed out for some fresh air (you may have noticed the wet clothing that came home)!  Please check to make sure that your child has a raincoat and set of boots that can be kept at school...we will often be venturing out for fun in the rain!  Thank you! 

Fortunately, we had beautiful sunny weather for each of our first two field trips!  

Hopefully we spread lots of peace as we journeyed through downtown with our peace doves and posters!  

Bike week always brings lots of smiles!  What a fun way to spend recess!  We had 2 wheel bikes, bikes with training wheels, scooters and balance bikes!  Yay!  I am happy to report that everyone was very careful and mindful of other riders, allowing us to really focus on how fun riding together can be!  Perhaps we should have a repeat in the Spring?  If you'd like, check out Jen's post  Here we are in the Middle Ages! to see pictures of our biking trip, as well as our trip through the time machine!  Thanks for sharing Jen!

Friday was our 28th day of school!  Wow!  I can hardly believe it's been that long...time really does fly when your having fun...or perhaps it was the time machine that had something to do with this!  As you may already know, we have traveled through the time machine and landed in the MIddle Ages!  

We created groups of 100 noodles and counted by 100's until we had 1000 noodles in our bag!

Our THEME studies so far have been spent exploring great castles (do you know  what a keep or curtain wall is?) and learning about many of the time's occupations.  From illuminators to queens to midwives to goldsmiths, there were jobs quite similar to jobs of today and some very, very different! Ask your child if they could pick any job to have in the Middle Ages what it would be!  

A few jobs from the Middle Ages!

Parts of a castle!

We have moved on from patterns, although we've been noticing that patterns are all around us!  So, even though we aren't officially studying patterns, we find them in books, on our socks, in our study of castles and on the playground!  Our MATH time now focuses on developing and strengthening our sense of numbers.  For some, this means learning to count one object at a time..for others, this involves counting and comparing groups of objects...while others spend time learning to use our base ten blocks and compare  2 digit numbers using < and > signs!  We are learning many new games to help us practice these skills.  Compare is a great game to try at home.  It is very similar to the card game "war".  We've been using number cards 2 through 5 or 2 through 9 (whatever is just right).  Some of us have been turning over just one card and comparing the single digit cards, while others have been turning over 2 cards to create double digit numbers to compare.  After each player turns over one or two cards, the players then look at all cards and the player with the highest number says "me!"  All cards are placed together in a discard pile (there is no winner in this version).  Play continues until all cards have been used!   We are also all participating in number writing practice!  It can be tricky to know which way those numbers should face!   

This seems like a good time to describe the handwriting program we use at OCS (for letters and numbers)!  Just hearing the word handwriting may bring back memories of writing letters over and over until your hand felt like it would fall off!  (Well, ok, that's my memory...hopefully yours is different!)  We use a program called Handwriting WIthout Tears, which I really like.  The program was developed to simplify handwriting.  In this program, all of the capital letters are formed using only four strokes...a big line, a little line, a big curve and a little curve.  Putting these strokes together in various formations gives us all of the capital letters!  For example a big line and 2 small curves make the letter B.  I have wooden blocks representing each of these strokes that we use to build the letters.  We also practice on chalkboards (with chalk, cloths and sponges).  Our handwriting practice on paper focuses on the "less is more" motto.  Handwriting is part of our Tuesday/Thursday literacy center routine.  Oh, one more thing that's really neat about this program...the letters are grouped based on where they begin.  Right now we are focusing on all the letters that begin in the upper left hand corner of our chalkboard, with a "big line down".  Knowing where to begin a letter helps tremendously in preventing reversals!

Handwriting Supplies

Handwriting is just one small piece of our LANGUAGE ARTS studies.  On Monday and Wednesday, we have Writing Workshop.  During this time kids choose topics to write about and write at their "just right" level.  Right now, many are creating books of things they like!  From butterflies to dresses to toys to smelling flowers...there are some many things to like!  Our literacy centers include handwriting practice, phonics work and reading groups.  Some are working on learning to recognize letter names and sounds, others work on solidifying the names and sounds of letters, while others work on solidifying a recognition of beginning blends (sl, bl, gr, etc.).  This is a great time (11 to 12 Tues/Thurs) to volunteer, if you'd like to see what's going on in the classroom...I will set you up with your very own center!  Right now, I have this time covered with work study students, but they will be very appreciated in the other classes if you'd like to join us!

I hope you've had a chance to see some of the beautiful ART we are creating!  I am so enjoying having our class decorated with such creativity!  Here's a sampling for those of you that don't make it in to the classroom very often:  

Inspired by our study of patterns and our read aloud "Catwings"!

Self-Portraits!

 Fall Leaves!

Book Owls!

Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful children with me!  Happy Fall!

C is for Conifer

Some students will be bringing home an 8 1/2 by 14" sheet of paper to complete their Nature Journal Art Conifer project.  We will be putting these up on our Wonderful Work wall, and some folks do need to finish up if they haven't completed this project by Friday.  If your child brings this work home, please support careful, concise work in art, and precise labeling.  The only conifer branch we have been working with that is not present in this picture is the Western Red Cedar branch.  From the top left corner, working around clockwise, the plants are: Alder, Digger Pine, Sequoia, Yew, Spruce, and Douglas Fir. 

Thanks!

Bike Week and Time Machine!

What an exciting week!  This week must be the first time my bike has had so many friends to hang out with on the bike rack! 

Bike week isn't the most exciting thing this week, though.

We have been busy getting ready to travel through time.  What do you need to travel through time?  Well, a time machine, of course!

Well, we will certainly need a control panel...

and the control panel will definitely need headlights and many, many wires.

The control panel has a lot of buttons with many different purposes.

Maybe we need a fare box?

The entrance is extremely fancy with curtains and lots of levers!

The exit is also extrtemely fancy!

Tomorrow we will go through our time machine, I wonder where and when we will end up!