Week of December 6, 2010

The holiday cheer is growing and growing! We have Twinkles, the library elf on a shelf, visiting our classroom for the next two weeks. The children are very excited to see where he is each day as they arrive to school.

This week we learned:

• Math: We learned how to count by 10s. This is very easy for the children because we have been counting by 10s since the 10th day of school as we count each day that we have been in school. The students can count to 100 by 10s! We played the "Teen Frame" game. We This game helps us to practice counting to 20 using one-to-one correspondence. We also learned how to use a number line to add and subtract.

• Reader's Workshop: We compared "The Mitten" by Jon Ayelsworth and "The Hat" by Jan Brett. We looked at the similarities in the characters and the plot.
• Writer's Workshop: We continue to practice using our Alphabet Linking Chart to write the sounds that we hear in words.

• Phonics and Word Study: We learned that you can connect the sound you hear at the beginning of a word to look for that word. To do this we matched pictures and words by listening to the sounds in the words.

• Handwriting: We learned how to write X and Y.
• Social Studies: We learned about mail carriers and practiced memorizing our address.

Library Workstation - the students get to read books quietly

Writing Workstation - the students completed gingerbread man books

ABC/Word Study Workstation - the students had to find rhyming word pairs

Pocket Chart Workstation - the students were building words from "The Gingerbread Man"