Circle time!

So here is the first post of the year. Hopefully I will remember how to do this so I can post throughout the years.
I figured I would give you a small glimpse into our day.

 After unpacking our stuff and working at the tables for a short period of time, we have circle time. Students are chosen to be the helper.

 First we have calendar

Happy New School Year 2013-2014!
We are off to begin a new year! I am excited to see my students from last year and meet our new classroom friends! I am again going to try updating this blog - hopefully it will be a way for you to have a conversation with your student about what he or she is doing at school!
See you real soon!

The Mitten

After the winter break, we read "The Mitten", by Jan Brett. It is a Ukrainian folk tale about a little boy who loses a mitten in the snow. Many forest animals decide to move in and the mitten gets so big that when a mouse decides to move in too a very surprising event happens.

We created several mini books. This book is sung to the tune of "Farmer in the Dell". The students all loved this book!

Each student created their own storytelling pieces. We practiced telling the story at circle times.

Over the last few weeks, we have been reading many different books about forest animals. We have taken a closer look at several animals.
We looked at the characteristics of the brown bear, his habitat, his diet and the life cycle. Because most of the students cannot read, we try to add in lots of pictures.

After focusing on the bear, we looked at the hedgehog.

To help us remember the information, we have been singing songs about these animals. The hedgehog song is to the tune of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".

The Brown bear song is to the tune of "Farmer and the Dell."

Bear Snores On

In December, we read "Bear Snores On" by Karma Wilson. In the story, several forest animals one by one enter the cave of the sleeping bear to escape the weather outside. Each animal brings a little something and soon a party is going on. Eventually, they wake up the bear which makes for an exciting ending.

Ms. Deb, Dina and Fay created a board outside of our classroom to introduce the story. Each student decorated a snowman and add their face to which were put on the board.

Our bear is nice and warm under his quilt. A follow up story we read was also by Karma Wilson entitled "Bear Stays Up for Christmas". In this story, bear is gifted the blanket.

One of the projects was for each student to make their own cave. We ripped black, gray, green and yellow papers for the project. Then we added a die cut bear.

Thanksgiving Books and Projects

This week we will continue to read our thematic book "I know an Old Lady who Swallowed a Pie". In addition, we are also reading two other books that are also songs you might be familiar with.

First we have been reading/singing "One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims". This book talks about the daily life of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag. Through the pictures you see similarities and differences of their daily lives and finally there big celebration!

We are also singing/reading the book "Over the River, A Turkey Tale". This book follows the traditional song melody but follows a unique family to their celebration of Thanksgiving day.

Today, each student made a Cornucopia. Do not be surprised if your student comes home saying this big word! First we ripped brown paper and placed it inside a pre-drawn design. The students than colored and cut out the basket face. Lastly, they cut out delicious foods they could enjoy.

The Wild Turkey

Over the last few weeks, we have been talking about turkeys. We started off by making several art projects that featured turkeys.
For this project, we cut out different shapes. It was a great way to practice our cutting skills.

Another project we created involved snipping "feathers" to go on a turkey.

Here we used our hand prints to decorate a turkey. These turkeys are hanging out with the people we made week 1!

After we were familiar with the idea of a turkey, we read a teacher made book about turkeys. Miss Deb even put it together using Turkey shapes!

Last week, we created a pictorial chart about the Wild Turkey. On Wednesday we created a pictorial chart about the Wild Turkey. We have been talking about it everyday since! Here is a picture of the completed chart.

We talked about the physical characteristics of a Wild Turkey. The snood is a piece of flesh that hangs over the turkeys beak. We hold our fingers over our nose as we practice saying"snood". The wattle hangs down under the Turkey's beak. We wiggle our fingers our own chin as we say "wattle". The Wild Turkey has fan like feathers. We hold up a fist and make a fan with our other fingers at the back as we say "fan like feathers" to help us remember.

We learned some interesting facts about the Wild Turkey. They have a 5 ft. wing span. We held our arms out to remember this.

The turkey has a varied diet. We learned that diet refers to what an animal eats. Some of the things a Wild Turkey eats are the same as we eat and somethings a human would not eat!

We learned that the Wild Turkey lives in the forest of North America. Over the next few weeks we will start a theme about forest animals so expect to hear a lot more about the forest!

We learned that the Wild Turkey is Oviparous, which means it is born from an egg. Humans are not Oviparous. When we say Oviparous, we hold our hands in the shape of an oval to remind us of eggs.

After we learned about turkeys, one of our rotational activities was to read and color the mini book "Turkey by the...". We had fun seeing all of the places on a farm a turkey could stand by! After completing the book, we did a fun worksheet where we practiced putting turkey's by the same object they stood next to in the book. Both of these came home last Thursday.
Sorry for the side ways pictures, but I could not get them to flip!