The Past Few Days

This post encompasses the last few days. On Tuesday, the Windy City Players performed Robin Hood for us. They are a group from Chicago, and they were awesome and very funny. Six of my students even got to pretend to be Robin Hood's "merry men" at the end of the play.

We have been focusing on letter sounds in reading groups. Today, I gave each student a bag with puzzle pieces. They had to match the letters to the picture with the same beginning sound. It was a little difficult because the letters were lowercase, but they loved the challenge.


Our biggest challenge of the day was completing a large, number grid together. I gave each student a sheet of stickers to complete the number grid. They started to notice the pattern right away, and said, "This makes a staircase." Such smart friends I have! :-) The grids are proudly displayed in the hallway for all to see.

Apple Art

We finished our apple books that we have been working on in reading centers. They are very good at reading them, so be sure you ask them to share it with you. We also made an apple art project. First, we cut out apple cores. Then, we tore up red pieces of paper and glued them to the top and bottom of the core. We really loved the tearing! Now, we have a wonderful apple bulletin board in our room.

Two friends holding up their apple books in reading groups

Making the apples


A friend holding up his finished apple core

The apple bulletin board

Favorite Apple Graph

This week we are celebrating apples in honor of Johnny Appleseed's birthday. We've been reading about apples and are even making an apple book in reading groups (it emphasizes color words). We have learned that apples can be red, green, and yellow. Today, we sampled all 3 flavors of apples and each student decided which flavor was their favorite. Then, we graphed the results. We had a 3-way tie!

Sampling the 3 apple flavors



Here's the graph:

Ice Cream Party!!!

We had our counselor, Mrs. Hayes, come in for our weekly counseling session. She talked about the 3rd response Chester the Cat had towards the bullies. This was a "cool" response. He took a deep breath and said, "If you don't stop, I will not play with you." They learned this is a very good response to use against bullies. They made their 3rd puppet today. Then, Mrs. Hayes acted out the different responses (cold, hot, and cool), and they held up the correct puppet. They even acted out some of Chester's responses.
At the end of the day, we had our ice cream party for filling our spirit stick with lassos! We ate chocolate chip ice cream and enjoyed a Max and Ruby video. It was a lot of fun! :-)

Holding up their "cool" response Chester puppets

Eating their ice cream

Finger-painting Fall Trees

We have been discussing the colors leaves turn in the fall. We have also been reading many fall books, and we even made a fall book of our very own today. We also got to make our own trees! I gave the students a tree that they colored in. Then, they used red, yellow, and orange paint and finger-painted leaves onto the tree. It was very fun, and we have some fabulous trees hanging out in the hallway! We also filled our spirit stick today with lassos. Our behavior has been so awesome lately! We will be having an ice cream party on Wednesday, when we return from our break. :-)

Finger-painting the trees



A friend holding up her tree

Some of the trees hanging up in the hallway

We did it! We filled our first spirit stick! Can you see it in the picture?

Turtle Begins with T!

I just wanted to quickly share one of our newest projects with you. We have been discussing the letter T in Animated Alphabet. We have been coming up with all kinds of words that start with T. Today, we made a turtle. The turtles turned out really great, and they are now pros at following directions! Also, check out some of the "details" they added to their pictures.

3 Friends holding up their turtles (They're all displayed in the hallway)

What's all the Fuss?

We have been working on a book called, "What's All the Fuss?" in reading groups this week. It's a part of a program called "Sing to Read." All of the books in this series are set to song. This helps students learn to read. Also, each book gives students the opportunity to illustrate the pictures on each page. They're really fun, and you'll see several more come home throughout the year.
We also played a fun counting game in math. Each student was given a game board and a dice. The dice had numerals instead of dots to help the students with number recognition. They simply rolled the dice and moved their game piece that many spaces. The first person to reach the end was the winner. They loved it!

Coloring in the last page in the book

Playing the math game