January 5

January 8-12

We started our week back from the holidays making our New Year's hats. This was our silly picture to wish everyone a very "Happy New Year" from everyone in Room 1.

VIP of the Week

Meet Mr. L

He shared his very nice T shirt with our class of things that he likes to do with his family. We were happy to hear about his trip to Colorado. His favorite color is blue, and he likes pizza! We also learned that he would like to trade places with his little brother. He also likes to play the game, "Open Seasons."

Making new friends.

We started our week with reading books about winter, weather and the seasons of the year. If you have any materials that you would like to share on penguins, polar bears, animals in winter, hibernation, winter, weather or the water cycle, please let us know.

We had fun making our snowman with a poem. Everyone loved the bunny who said: "Nibble, nibble, CRUNCH!

We made snow!

We made a pattern using lots of different winter fun foam pictures.

We made a list to find out how many children have ever made a snowman.

Free choice activities

This web site was recommended to Mrs. Critchell by a fellow teacher for some very interesting science discovery things. http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/

We set goals for what we want to learn in 2008!

RAH

Thanks to all who remembered to return their RAH (Read at Home) paper this month. The goal is for each child to read a total of 400 minutes or about 20 minutes for 5 nights a week. Everyone who reached this goal and returned their record sheet will receive a RAH badge and a chance to win a free book in the drawing from PTA. Please continue to record the number of minutes your child reads each day.

We love going to the library every Wednesday.

Journal Writing

We work on some type of writing each day in the class. We appreciate your help in stressing the importance of forming letters correctly, starting at the top, and making circles counterclockwise. This will be a big help now and later as your child progresses into cursive writing in third grade.

We have been busy writing in our Journals at least two or three times a week. We will be saving these for you to see the wonderful progress that they are making in printing and writing. Each child is responsible for writing one sentence that we write together. Then we encourage each student to write as much as he/she is able to do on their own using inventive spelling. It is amazing to see how well they are applying the skills learned with Alpha Friends that we have been working on since September. If you child isn't able to hear all of the sounds in the word he/she is trying to spell, then ask if he/she know the beginning and/or the ending sound. This is a great start and we praise all efforts.

Social Studies

We started our study of Dr. Martin Luther King this week. We read the book, The Crayon Box that Talked. This is an excellent story with a wonderful message for children to learn about how we need all colors to make our world complete. Ask your child about the beginning, middle and the end of the story. Each of the children will be drawing a self portrait to add to our crayon box. With all of the colors, our picture is complete!

Tumblebooks is a wonderful website that was recently recommended to me by a friend. TumbleBooks is a site presented by the Orange County Library and has a new online collection of animated, talking picture books. The storybook library offers lively and interactive reading adventures for young children and their families. There are all kinds of fun things for the kids to have fun learning. And, they can log RAH reading time, too! Click on the Valentine above for the link.

We made a fun booklet about Five Little Snowmen

Sudoku for Kids!

Sudoku puzzles have recently become very popular and are great puzzles for developing logic skills. These puzzles usually use numbers, but they can also be played with pictures. Click on the graphic to find out how to play. There are many more sites for kids to learn to play Sudoku. If you find other great sites, please share with us!

VIP of the Week!

We learned lots of great things about Mr. O. He likes to play baseball. He has two brothers and one sister. He likes Scooby Doo and he would like to trade places with the President of the U.S. His favorite animal is a cat, and he has two cats. If he could be any animal, he would like to be a cheetah. Thanks for sharing so many things with us!

Learning to track in reading.

We use our phonics to help us write.

We wrote stories about things that we LOVE.

January Award Winners

Kindness is our "Manner or the Month!"

Happy Birthday to Mr. B!

Writing

We wrote fun facts that we have learned about penguins. Ask your child to share some things he/she has learned about these cute birds!

This is such an exciting time of the year when all of our hard work on learning the letters and sounds is really paying off! YEAH! Please continue to read all of the little books with your child and add them to his/her Treasure Box of books.

We played Bingo to help us learn the blends and digraphs. We are working on: bl, br, cr, cl, dr, fl, fr, gr, gl, pl, pr, st, str, sn, sm, wh, th, sh, and ch. We would appreciate your help at home in reinforcing the sounds made when these letters are put together.

Math

One of the skills that we have been working on in math is how to sort things. A fun way to reinforce sorting is to have your child put away the knives, forks and spoons. Or, you can ask him/her to sort different toys when it is time to clean up!

We sorted crayons into different groups by color, size and length.

Then we sorted people by hair color, color of their eyes, what they were wearing and boy/girls.

Mr. A is our VIP

Thank your for sharing all of your pictures of your family. We found out so many interesting things about Mr. A. We know his favorite color is red, he likes pizza, he likes to play with his little brother, and he wants to visit Hawaii again! We are looking forward to hearing lots more about him throughout the week.