Thursday, January 22, 2009

We made it to the 100th day of school! Your little ones are officially 100 days smarter. We started the day off by putting on our 100th day visors...


Then we counted out 100 Fruit Loops by tens and made 100th day necklaces... We also counted to 100 by putting stickers on the chart... We filled out a Hundreds Chart...with a little help, of course... We made 100th Day Trail Mix. Yummy!!

Monday, January 19, 2009

Penguins

This past week, we had fun studying about penguins. We did different activities that helped us realize what amazing animals penguins are. Ask your little one to share with you some of the facts that we learned. They really enjoyed reading non-fiction books and looking at photos of penguins. At the end of the week, we made penguins from Oreos and Hershey's kisses. Here are a few pictures from Penguin Week.

 
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Thursday, January 8, 2009

The Mitten by Jan Brett






This week our class has read and studied The Mitten by Jan Brett.



In the book, a Ukrainian boy named Nicki wants his grandmother Baba to knit snow-white mittens for him. She warns her grandson that a white mitten will be hard to find if he loses it in the snow, but of course he promptly does just that! What happens next is the surprising part, as a mole takes refuge in the lost mitten, then a rabbit, then a hedgehog, an owl, a badger, and a fox. If you think the mitten might be a wee bit stretched out at this point, just wait: "Then a big bear sniffed at the mitten. The animals were packed in tight, but the bear didn't care. He crawled in anyway." When a tiny mouse squeezes in, her whiskers tickle the bear's nose. He sneezes, and "Aaaaa-aaaaa-ca-chew!" all the animals fly out of their crocheted cave. As the mitten sails through the air, Nicki spots it, reclaims it, and takes it home to show his smiling Baba.

It is a great book to help us study characters, setting, sequence of events, and beginning middle and end. We had fun all week doing different activities that went along with The Mitten. Today, we took the story and did a Reader's Theater with it. We used a red blanket as the mitten and each of the animals climbed in one by one. The children really enjoyed it.