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!

CHEERS TO A GREAT BEGINNING!

It's hard to believe that it's September already and that we just finished our first full week of school!  This year we welcome many new friends and families to our school community, as well as Jen, our amazing 3rd, 4th and 5th grade teacher!

Our first days of school have been filled with community activities galore...friendship building games, brainstorming classroom agreements, meeting our reading buddies (yippee!), thinking about what we'd like to learn about this year, learning routines, and lots of socializing!  This year we have been (and plan to continue) spending a lot of time together as a whole school community!  It has been really nice seeing kids of all ages interacting, helping one another, and playing together at recess!  Everyone seems to be transitioning into the new school year well.  There have been some tears here and there (it's hard being in a new place all day!), and it is heart-warming to see the love and caring that students show in comforting each other!

Make Kind Choices is one of the 3 OCS agreements.  What does this mean?  

See what our class had to say!

 Helping a friend learn to pour water!

An art project to help us get to know each other a bit better!  What are your favorite things?

What an enthusiastic group this is!  After many requests from returning students for Writing Workshop, we jumped right in!  Everyone did some writing at a "just right" level.  We continue the tradition of having Writing Workshop on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11 to 12.  If you are ever interested in seeing what it's all about, feel free to stop by!  The hour is filled with mini writing lessons, writing about self-chosen topics, and sharing.  One of my favorite things about Writing Workshop is that it allows students to participate and grow as a writer at a level suited perfectly to them...that, and I love reading the stories!

Our Tuesday/Thursday Language Arts time is typically set aside for centers.  Our first practice run went quite smoothly!

Putting together an alphabet puzzle.

The handwriting program we use, uses just four strokes to build all of the capital letters!   Perhaps we can build our names!

 Coloring alphabet charts that we will use during Writing Workshop to help us with sounds.

Our classroom has become filled with patterns, as we delve into our first math unit!  I feel like I'm in a Dr. Seuss book...patterns here, patterns there, patterns everywhere!  Aside from math, I am seeing patterns emerge in art projects, with the kynex and in dramatic play!  It's been lots of fun learning and practicing our first math games!  If you ask, your child may be able to show you how to play What's Missing? at home!

Building a pattern with bears!

A very "fancy" pattern!

                         

 Reading a pattern...blue, white, blue white...

Friday workshops are already a very popular time!  And for a very good reason!  Thank you teachers!  I love watching (and participating) as the kids teach each other!  

Fun with Perfection! 

UNO!

Each day we end our time with Investigations, which is a time for  less structured play and socializing.  It has been fun watching play evolve as friends get to know one another!  At times everyone plays together and at others there are smaller groups or even individual play.  One thing I've noticed so far is that the groups seem to be very fluid and inclusive!  Folks are getting along well and using respectful words to make request!  Yippee!

 Tinker Toys!  

The horses have been popular!

Working together to dress the baby!  We have a very well taken care of baby!

This year we have classroom jobs!  The jobs will rotate weekly.  I have been ever so impressed with how seriously the kids are taking their jobs!  There's been vacuuming galore (yay for the new vacuum!), lots of table wiping, shoe straightening, timekeeping, spiffying, plant watering and pencil sharpening!  Leaving early one day, Ruby, concerned that her job wouldn't be done, took it upon herself to ask a friend to fill in!  So sweet!

It has been a remarkable beginning to the school year and I feel blessed each day that I get to spend teaching, learning and growing with your fabulous kiddos!  I'd like to leave you with a tip I learned  this week... 

If you are going to fly a paper airplane outside, be sure to check which way the wind is blowing!