What a busy week!

What a busy and fun week!  We started the week off with the 100^th day of school.  It was so fun to see all of the 100-year-old friends walk through the door!  We spent the morning in math centers making 100 Fruit Loop necklaces, using our 100 items from home to count and group, and writing all the numbers from 0 to 100.  We read a lot of fun 100 day stories and thought of 100 things we have learned this year!

The following day was Valentine’s Day, and we had a lot of fun in Valentine’s Day centers as well!  The K-Kids sorted and graphed candy colors, made a Valentine’s Day word book, and colored their Valentine’s Day BINGO boards.  In the afternoon, we had a party to celebrate friendship, passed out cards, and had some yummy treats!

Labeling parts of a fish

On Wednesday we started our ocean unit!  The K-Kids created a schema chart and recorded what they think they know about oceans.  They wrote about what they want to know more about (a lot of sharks, jellyfish, and octopuses coming our way!).  The K-Kids learned about the three main zones of the ocean – the sunlit zone, the twilight zone, and the midnight zone.  We will first focus on the sunlit zone.  It is the smallest zone but has the most ocean life.  I thought a good place to start was learning about the fish and what makes a fish a fish.  The K-Kids learned the body parts of a fish and drew a diagram with labeled parts.  They also created a fish using tissue paper and a lot of glue!  These beauties will be on display on our back classroom wall.

In math this week, we focused on subtraction.  The K-Kids worked on problems that were appropriate for them – some children used manipulatives, some children used pictures and number writing, and another group of children used base ten blocks to solve problems with larger numbers.  We also touched on the idea of “order of events” which is an introduction to telling time.  The K-Kids drew three pictures in order to represent a sequence of events and wrote three sentences to match.

Writer’s Workshop was a time to introduce a new writing format- the letter.  It was quite humorous when we were talking about ways to connect with people that we cannot see every day.  Many of the children mentioned that we can call them on the cellphone, Skype with them on the computer or write them an email.  No one mentioned writing a letter – but maybe they will now!  The K-Kids learned the different parts of a letter – the date, greeting, body, and closing.We will continue to learn about the ocean next week with a focus on fish, sharks, and stingrays.