Catch Up...

Well...it feels like FOREVER since I've blogged...and I am so sorry! But rest assured things keep moving along in room 313.  My littles learn something new and surprise me with their background knowledge and ability to transfer that to what we are studying!

We have been doing LOTS of Write From the Beginning. WFTB is a tool using thinking maps to help us understand the abstract idea of sentences.
As you know Thinking Maps are tools to ORGANIZE our thinking.  Each map is used for ONE specific organizational idea, unlike graphic organizers.
{If you would like more information on Thinking Maps please do NOT hesitate to ask!}
So we have been brainstorming what we know about the "subject" of our sentences.

You can see the subject this week is penguins and it is in green...that is were we are starting our sentences. The blue words are our "connecting" words and our details are in the red where our sentences will stop.
After we brainstorm what we know about our subject we then go to our tree map and fill it in.  (Right now I am giving them the green and blue).  After it has been filled in, it's time to take it off the map.  We practice reading our complete sentences. We talk about where the capital letter is and where we need spaces and what goes after the red boxed word (period).  We also talk about adding more if needed. We have focused on one "connecting" word per tree map the past few weeks. BUT on Friday we will put three different ones on our map.
Chase was our EXPERT on penguins today! Your child will be able to build on these maps as he/she grows in his/her writing!

Our Reader's Workshop continues to evolve as well.  Today we watched another FISD kindergarten class talk about books. CLICK HERE
From this video we were able to observe some other ways we discuss our books with our buddy.

As we discussed these we questioned one another about what we thought they meant. Such as, strategies after our discussion we decided strategies were the tools we have in our tool box: look at the pictures, chunk it up, make connections to other words, get our mouth ready... We will use our new discussion stems tomorrow!

In math we continue to study shapes, both 2-d and 3-d.  The mathematicians that we are...we started using some new vocabulary.  Not only do we call them 2-dimensional but PLANE shapes as well.  As we look closely at our plane shapes we decided that we should look at how they are the same and different and how we could sort our shapes.  We said we could sort them with corners and without corners...hmmmm, I said I thought that there might be another word a mathematician might use for corners...UH YEP and it is VERTICES.  We also looked at our shapes and decided we could sort them straight sides or curved sides....and after all this talk about sorting I introduced the word ATTRIBUTES.

We will continue to use this vocabulary through out this week and next as we continue to explore!

BUCKAROO
Well...Mr. Luke was an amazing buckaroo last week. He was the GO TO GUY for the substitute!

 Luke read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to the class!

Mom came on Thursday and had lunch with this special little!

It looks like our Luke is a talented soccer player!! Thanks for sharing with us.

This week Addison is our Buckaroo!

We learned a lot about her today!  Some of her favorites, cheese, chocolate, Disney, friends and family!

We have lots of fun stuff coming up in February!
100th Day of School...lots of notes will be coming home about this.
Valentine's Day...

Have a wonderful evening!