Weekly Update, February 14 - 18

♥ Happy Valentine's Day!!! ♥


Today's Valentine's Day Party was so much fun!  Thank you, parents, for donations of your time and supplies that made our party great.  The kids had a wonderful time!  We had 4 fun centers: movable dancing hearts, love bird valentines, teddy bear heart frames and heart crowns.  Everything turned out so cute!  The heart crowns were a class favorite and the kids loved wearing them!  This afternoon we sorted and graphed conversation hearts, made a class book about Valentine's Day, passed out and opened valentines and decorated and ate cookies! What a fun day!  My mom came to school today to join the Valentine's Day celebration.  She read Arthur's Valentine to the kids and they were impressed with how she did the voices!  She really enjoyed her time in our classroom!

Love of Reading month is going great!  Last week the kids read an incredible 152 books!  Our class total is now 231 books.  We are almost half way to our goal!  Great job kids and keep on reading!  I am so proud of all of you!  Kids - remember to fill out hearts at home.  The books you read at home count toward our class total.

Happy Birthday Arizona!  Today is also Arizona's 99th birthday!  This week we will learn all about our great state!  We will learn about the state flag, tree, flower and bird.  The kids will write a book page per day to go with each symbol and, at the end of the week, each child will have his/her own Arizona book!

This week in writing we are working more with word choice.  The kids did such a great job with strong verbs last week!  Tomorrow the kids will write strong verbs that describe Arizona.  On Wednesday, the kids will learn and write about explicit nouns that describe Arizona.  On Thursday, the kids will use their lists of strong verbs and explicit nouns to write a short story about an Arizona adventure.  I have a fun pen pal activity planned for Friday.  My college friend, Mrs. Fullen, is a teacher in Ohio.  Her students are learning about The United States of America and so our class will write letters to her students to tell them about Arizona.  The kids are so excited to have pen pals!

The kids had fun in their Valentine's Day centers!  The centers for the week include:
1.  Listening - The kids listened to It's Valentine's Day by Jack Prelutsky.  After they listened, they made a valentine for someone special.
2.  Social Studies - The kids played a valentine What's Missing? game.  Several Valentine's Day items were placed on the table.  The kids took turns covering the items and removing 1 or 2 items to test the rest of the group's memory.  They really enjoyed this!
3.  Writing - The kids worked on a Valentine's Day crossword puzzle. 
4.  Math - The kids played a greater than/less than/equal to game with cupids and hearts.  The kids opened a heart to reveal 2 numbers and they placed the appropriate symbol between the numbers to compare them.
5.  Reading - The kids worked on reading aloud to friends to read with inflection.

The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow.  This week in making words we are working on word chunk word races.  The kids will be given a word chunk and then challenged to make as many words as they can with that chunk.

We are taking a break from our money study in math; we will come back to it toward the end of the year.  This week we will jump ahead a few chapters to work on shapes.  The kids will recognize shapes by names, points and other attributes.

Our science fair project turned out great!  The kids worked SO hard on it and each child in the class played a role in putting the tri-fold display board together.  We will turn in our project tomorrow and view the other projects on Thursday.  Kids - be sure to tell you parents about our neat science project!

The kids had fun in computers today.  If you'd like to see what they did, click on the posting directly below this one, Computers, 2/14.

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston