Wednesday

Wow...getting ready for Thursday already!!! We had a very good day today.  We got a lot accomplished.

We finished up our pumpkin life cycle book...from yesterday's rotation.

Reading
This week we are learning a new comprehension strategy.
Good Readers are able to make connections.  This week we are just working on what connections are and how they help us.  Today everyone was giving a dot to dot. I asked them to make a prediction of what they thought they had a picture of. Once they had made their predictions based on the clues and their schema they CONNECTED the dots.  Once the dots were connected we were able to confirm or change our prediction.  We also noticed if we didn't connect the dots correctly it made it difficult to see the picture.

Math:
OH FUN TIMES!
Problem solving.  We discussed what a set was.  We concluded that it was a group of "things" that go together some how...(are connected but don't have to all be the SAME thing).
We started problem solving on paper this week.  So today they copied "My set of ________." I told them a little story and they had to record how many went into their set.  "I went to the pumpkin patch.  I saw 3 orange pumpkins and 1 green pumpkin. How many pumpkins did I see?" We found out that our set was a set of 4 pumpkins...It didn't really matter what color they were since the question was not specific.

Then we practiced one less and counting back from 5.  Everyone had a "bed" (5 frame) and 5 "monkeys" (counters) We put those naughty little monkeys on the bed and they started jumping...we took one off when he fell and bumped his head.  Then we had 4...and so on! We had so much FUN we decided to act it out on our carpet squares as well! We talked about one less monkey each time.

Science:
MY OH MY...your child is bringing home a pumpkin VINE (or two) these need to be REPLANTED  as soon as possible.  They also need to be replanted and kept INDOORS...It takes about 4 months for a pumpkin to grow.  If it has ideal conditions we (you) should have a pumpkin around Valentine's Day!  My littles were SUPER EXCITED to see what had happened to their seeds.  We talked about the white part of the seed that we put in the ground being the "jacket" holding everything in.  Some of the jackets were still attached to their leaves so we could see that everything came out of the seed!  Have planted them in the clear cups allowed us to be able to see the root system as well and that had to have come from the jacket!  So many things to look at and talk about!

Have a great evening! Off to see my NORTH DAKOTA babies.