Weekly Update, February 13 - 17

♥ Happy Valentine's Day!!! ♥
Happy 100th Birthday, Arizona!

We have a fun day planned for tomorrow’s Valentine's Day Party! We have 4 fun centers planned: construction paper conversation heart wreaths, love bird valentines, dancing hearts and heart crowns. Thank you to all the volunteers who help to make our parties great!

Love of Reading month is going great! 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.  This Friday, February 17 is a special storybook dress-up day!  The kids will dress up as their favorite storybook character.  Kids - be sure to bring your book to school to share with the class!

Happy Birthday Arizona! Tomorrow is also Arizona's 100th birthday! This week in social studies, guided reading and writing, 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.

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 partner 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.

In reading we are working on reading letters sounds v, x, y. We are also working on reading to learn what the author is trying to say and reading to learn the most important pieces of information.

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. Kids - be sure to tell you parents about our neat science project!

We have a fun activity planned for computers. If you’d like to see what the kids will do, please check the blog on Friday for the post called, “Computers, 1/17.”

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston