I've been away from keeping you updated as to what we've been up to--so sorry! Here is what we've been learning about these past couple of weeks:
1. Writing: We have been so busy writing about what we know! We write books focusing on one topic. We have a picture that teaches on each page, and we're attempting words by writing the sounds we hear. In addition, we have partners who can help us, and we've learned that we can solve our own problems (like where to get paper, where to sit, what happens if our pencils break, etc.). When we're looking for an idea, we reference our heart paper where we wrote about the things that we care about. We share what we've been working on at the end of our workshop. Writing time is how we start our day, and we love it!
2. Reading: Oh my, have we been busy in reading. Each day we work on various things. We're working on reading the pictures, reading the words, and sounding like a teacher. Lately we've been sounding like the characters when we read. That's been a lot of fun! We've been learning that characters are in fiction books, and that we can tell about characters by what they do and say. Another thing we've been working on is retelling what is happening in the story from the beginning, to the middle, to the end with transition words. We have both partner reading time and private reading time and it's hard to tell which one the class enjoys more. Reading is fun in itself, but especially when one can read to a favorite stuffed animal or a first grade friend!
3. Math: What haven't we done in math lately? We've worked on three shapes: circles, triangles, and rectangles. We created with just triangles and squares. Ask you child what attributes these shapes have. Speaking of attributes, we have done a lot of sorting. I'm especially excited to see how students can take the same objects and sort them in different ways. We have been working on counting, too.
4. Leadership: We have been learning about the seven habits of effective leaders. We've learned all seven! We've been working on teamwork using the habits. One day we worked together to build a tower with just index cards and tape. In addition to learning about the habits, we've been working on growth mindset, too. We have learned that our brains can change and grow. We used play-doh to help us learn that. We're working on the right words to use so we can have a growth mindset in our learning.
5. Fun!: We done a lot of fun things like tasting apples, seeing how many apples we can fit on our heads (ask us about the book we read!), and observing sunflowers. We've had a few indoor recesses as well. Check out what we like to do!
