We practiced addition sentences by working in pairs to shake a cup of ten pennies, drop them, and sort them into heads and tails. Students wrote an addition sentence of how many heads plus how many tails. They knew their "all together" number had to be ten since everyone started with only ten pennies. We practiced sight words by handing each student a card with a sight word written on it. We all sang a song, and as students heard their word, they brought the card forward and then we finger spelled the word.

Since this is Lauren's VIP week, she brought her dog Hoot to meet her classmates. He was a little afraid of all the activity! After reading It Looked Like Spilt Milk, students used their imaginations to turn a blob of white paint into some sort of cloud shape. You will see their creations on the bulletin board just outside the room when you come to your conference.

Contest Winners

Congratulations to Peyton and Jared, winners of today's coloring contest. Great work, guys!

I forgot to make copies of a coloring page for our coloring contest, and I certainly heard about it! I corrected my mistake and students will color their pictures tomorrow. My bad! We started a unit on taking care of our planet by reading a book about the importance of recycling. Thomas brought his dirt bike for show and tell at the end of the day.

Fuddrucker's Family Night on Tuesday

To celebrate report cards, take your family to dinner at the Fuddrucker's on Overland Ave. Tuesday night. Part of the proceeds benefit our school. Be sure to tell the cashier you are from Rose Park.

I finished all my testing today so I spent a little time with students during centers. They enjoyed posing for pictures. We watched the school talent show this afternoon. Our own Peyton performed a dance and did a great job -- no nerves at all! We had 4 minutes to clean up before going home. I was so impressed that we got the room completely clean and sent everyone home with all of their papers in that amount of time. Way to go, team! Don't forget to return your library books tomorrow.

We did a guided drawing lesson yesterday in which I showed students how to draw a bird step by step. Next, they outlined their bird with permanent marker, and then they painted it with tempra paint. The results were impressive! We talked about when to add an s to a verb to make it agree with the noun. For example, "A dog runs." "Three dogs run." We practiced writing numbers because I'm still seeing lots of backward numbers and letters.

We started a new shared reading today called "Spring." It talks about what Spring has, such as, "Spring has new buds on trees. Spring has sunshine." The last line of the poem is, "Spring has no snow." HA! So wrong! I tested students on their ability to make a repeating pattern. They did very well. I am working on report cards tonight. Report cards go home next Tuesday, right before conferences.

We talked about the signs of Spring that we're already noticing -- longer days, chirping birds, and warmer days. Students generated some ideas of their own and wrote about them. We did a science experiment in which we made rain in a jar by putting hot water into the bottle, covering the bottle with a paper plate, and putting ice cubes on top of the plate. I was impressed by the amount of information students retained from our lesson about the water cycle and how clouds form. In an effort to encourage neatnesss, we had our first ever coloring contest today. I asked an objective staff member to judge the papers. She had such a difficult time (because they were so good) that there was a 3-way tie. Congratulations to Joe P., Lauren, and Ellie! We decided to make the coloring contest a weekly event. There are 2 items in your Monday envelope that need to be returned tomorrow. One is the blue conference confirmation sheet. The other is a thin orange sheet asking if you'd like to order Highlights Magazine. Even if you do not want to order, please check the "No" box and sign it. If I receive all of the orange forms, our class will receive a box of stickers that can be used in the classroom.

Class Picture Tomorrow

We get our class picture taken tomorrow. Please turn in your picture money and orcer form if you want a copy of our class picture.

We learned "take away" in math today. The phrase used was "fewer than." You can practice with your child by showing them a group of objects, asking them to count how many are there, then secretly taking away a few and ask your child to figure out how many you took away. They should be able to count the number of object remaining and count up to the previous number to determine how many you took away. For example, if you showed them 10 cookies and took 3 away, they would count the 7 remaining cookies and count "8, 9, 10" and be able to tell you that's 3 numbers so you took 3 away. I showed them what a "take away" number sentence looks like, so you could practice that as well (10-3=7). Students have listened to several books about life on a farm and have identified examples of onomatopoeia in stories. They're so smart!

For math, students practiced counting on. I used a spinner to give us the beginning number and the students had to be able to say the next number. We went around the circle, counting up to 20. The person who said 20 had to stand up, then we started over again until everyone was standing up. They thought I rigged it because I was the last one standing. lol I read Blueberries for Sal and students shouted out when they noticed onomotopoeia (krplunk, thump, etc.).

Daylight Savings!!!

Don't forget to "spring forward" on Saturday night! Your child is bringing home an order form for butter braids. They attended a "kick-off assembly" today, telling them to only sell to people they know and to always sell with a parent or trusted adult. This is, of course, optional. The PTA sponsors these fundraisers to provide our school with books and technology items the school district could not otherwise provide. If you get any orders, please return the form by March 25. The PTA will announce when the butter braids arrive. They will need to be delivered only to people who are home to receive them as they cannot be left to thaw.

Everyone seems to understand addition so we are zooming through our unit. I have talked to the class about writing during the entire Writer's Workshop time versus writing a single sentence and saying "I'm done." When students shared their writing today, I was impressed to see filled pages. The best part is that I'm giving very little assistance--they are being so brave and sounding out words on their own! This is exactly what I expect to see by this time of the year. I was so happy that I gave them 10 minutes of dance music and just let them freestyle dance for a while. They loved it!

In sign language, we learned the signs for this week's shared reading "My Look Book" and also learned signs to the song "One Light One Sun" by Raffi. In math, students learned about odd and even numbers and used different number combinations to make addition problems (we call them number sentences) for the numbers 8 and 9. Ms. Butler taught a lesson on the jobs of students. Every student's job is to follow the classroom rules, do their school work, but students also have jobs at home such as making their beds. We discovered that they have a lot of jobs for being only 5 or 6 years old. In science we talked about fossils then students pressed different classroom objects into clay and had a classmate guess what the item was.

Students finished an art project we started Wednesday afternoon. We started addition in math today. In our curriculum, they introduce addition by saying "Two and two is 4." I also show them how to write it as a math sentence 2+2=4 and use "plus" and "and" interchangeably so they get used to the language. Students did an awesome job in writer's workshop. Some students want to write a simple sentence and say, "I'm done." I tell them that Writer's Workshop is like Santa's Workshop. The elves don't just build one toy and quit; they keep going until time is up. (I learned this from my reading coach.) It encourages those who are capable to add another sentence to make their writing more interesting. As a reward for their hard work, each student was able to share one piece of writing with the class today.

Andy Armadillo and Shyla visited our classroom to celebrate Read Across America. Shyla read a Dr. Seuss story to the class while Andy quietly observed. He was kind enough to let each student give him a hug and to pose for a photo. At the end of the day, Milan's dog visited class, too! It was a fun day.

As you can see, students had great fun with their water cycle experiment. They used eye droppers to evaporate water from a water source. We talked about how the water vapor is in the air but is invisible until it hits cold air and becomes a cloud. Students dropped water onto their clouds until the clouds could hold no more water and would begin to rain. In the morning, we watched the Rimrock Opera put on a performance about the dangers of smoking. It was a great message that I know they understood because many of them wrote about it in their journals. Jared drew a wonderful picture in his journal of two sets of lungs: one pink and healthy set and one that was black from smoking.