Happy New Year!

Happy 2012!! Before Winter Break we had fun learning about a couple of Winter holidays (Solstice, Kwanzaa, and Bodhi Day). The flowers above are from a Bodhi Day activity.  We made beautiful lotus flowers to look at while we meditated in honor of the Buddha reaching enlightenment. Ahhh...

Thank you all for a wonderful Portfolio Share Day!  The children were all so excited to share with you everything they have done this year and show off how much they have grown.  Yay!!

Math
Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters...we've been counting them all!  We have been playing so many games (matching game, money in the bank, pay the bills, two-coin game, clean up the money...) to help us learn and practice counting coins.  It has been great practice in putting our counting by tens and fives to practical use!  Olders worked more with quarters and everyone practiced adding on, counting the highest coins first, adding the next amount, until finally adding the pennies (25, 35, 45, 50, 55, 60, 61, 62, 63 cents!).  Our final task was to each add up the coins we needed to pay our individual  bill for our Ecuadorian feast!

We ended our unit on money with learning about Moon Jars and creating our own jars to save, spend and share our money.  It was great to hear from the kids their ideas of the kinds of things they may save up for, what they might spend some money on, and how they could share with others, too.

This week we have been practicing counting by twos.  We had fun thinking of things that come in two (earrings, shoes, nostrils...). We will visit multiplication again (2s table) and practice counting by two's with different games and ways of counting (yesterday we had fun pounding the table two times for every number we said...thump, thump, 2!, thump thump, 4!...).

Moon Jars

Literacy
In Writing Workshop, we have been busy becoming our own editors of our writing. With editor glasses on and checklist in hand, each child goes through and checks for capitals and periods, lowercase letters, and if it all makes sense.  As the year continues, the checklist will evolve with the children's writing.  They are taking their job as editor very seriously (it's what all authors must do with their stories) before they publish and share their books.

Spelling is up and running again!  Expect to see a list of new words every Monday!  The source of our words will be from our word sorts of the week or any high frequency words from our own writing or the word wall.

In reading workshop, we are learning different reading strategies that will help our comprehension, accuracy, or fluency while reading.  Watch our wall of strategies grow and our readers, too!

We enjoyed reviewing the sounds and playing mouth charades (making the vowel sound with our mouth -no sound - and friends guessing the vowel).  We have been using mirrors to help us or feeling our mouth position with our fingers to help us identify the vowel sound when writing words.  We also had lots of fun acting out the stories of babysitters.  How does "c" feel when left alone with a baby "a"?  A little nervous but luckily friendly "k" offers to help! (_ack)  Phew!  Or what about when "l" is left with a baby "e"? Uh-oh, "l" says, "I can't do this by myself!" Thankfully "l" has a wonderful twin that will help!  (_ell).  These stories have been wonderful in helping the kids learn different spelling patterns.  We will continue to practice our word famlies for a bit longer as we focus on beginning blends.

Theme
The Galapagos Islands were so amazing!  It was hard to leave, with so many interesting animals to learn about and get to know!  Our final day in Ecuador was delicious with our feast of Ecuadorian tortillas, salsa, corn salad with papaya dressing, and dried bananas and mango - yum!

Ecuadorian Feast =Delicious!

This week we hiked up the Andes through some mountain villages to find a good river that will flow to the Amazon.  We created pictures of what we saw and enjoyed reviewing our geometry terms and using the artistic skill of foreground, mid-ground, and background to add depth to our pictures.

Ecuadorian Mountain Village

As we canoe down the Amazon we are noticing how people live.  It has been interesting to see the children living along the Amazon and how different their lives are from our own and in what ways they are the same.

Our trusty canoes!

We also made a list of animals we hope to see along the Amazon...pink river dolphins, piranhas, jaguars, sloths...fingers crossed we see a few!