Reading buddies

Mrs. Darrows third graders came down to read Christmas stories to us and helped us make Christmas cards. I hope you enjoyed them:) The students worked so well together we decided we will continue to do reading buddies once a month next quarter. The kindergarteners were motivated to show them how well they can read and write too. This will be a great way for third graders to be leaders and the kindergarteners to have role models to encourage them to read!

Christmas themed centers

Literacy centers 

Top left; sight word game- pull an elf from the bag and say the sight word. Try to get as many elves as you can until someone pulls out the present they win the game!

Top right; nonsense word fluency. Trying to pronounce the words accurately and collect as many words as they can until someone pulls out a penguin from the deck. That student then has to start over. Bottom left; read a sentence, trace it, build it (cut out and arrange words in the correct order) and then independently write it. 

Bottom right; pull a card and write the beginning and ending sound of that word.

Math center 

Count the room involved finding the Christmas object pictures I put up all over the room and counting how many there were of each. 

Snow globes

We started doing narrative writing second quarter. The students used their imaginations to write about what they would do if they lived in a snow globe. They have shown so much progress with their writing skills this quarter. They are using spacing, appropriate capitalization, punctuation, and adding details. They are also referring to the word wall to correctly spell sight words, and stretching out words to write down the letter sounds they hear.

Parent volunteers

A huge thank you to the parent volunteers who came in to read with us for holiday week. The students loved hearing some of your favorite Christmas stories and doing a craft to bring home as Christmas presents.

Barry's mom read and made wreath ornaments with us.

Madelyn's mom read and helped us make snowman, reindeer, and Santa figures.

Zariah's Dad came in his police uniform to tell us about what he does and how he keeps people safe. He also read us "The Gingerbread boy" and then we decorated gingerbread men. 

Learning 3-D shapes

At the end of second quarter we started to learn three dimensional shapes. We compared flat and solid shapes, formed shapes using different materials(playdoh, tooth picks and marshmallows), and identified number of edges, sides, lines and vertices on shapes.