Big and Little! (R, S, T and 30)

Our theme this week was "Big and Little" and we focused on the number 30, and reviewed the letters R, S and T.

We finished the month of May this week, perfectly on Friday =], so we talked about our weather this year and last year. We do the weather every day as one of our Morning Meeting jobs.

For our calendar, we made an AAB pattern. They did awesome!

We read this week:  The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
                                There's a Hippopotamus Under My Bed by Mike Thaler
                                Little Cloud by Eric Carle
                                The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

Our question of the week was "What are you bigger than?"

For our theme of the week, i gathered a few items from around the classroom and asked in small groups about what larger and smaller means. One day I asked them to tell me which was larger, and the other day I asked for the smaller object. I always ask them why they think their answer is correct, and I love to see their reasoning and thought process. To go along with this, I had them complete these  two worksheets that I found in Shapes and Measurements.

The class wrote in their journals about something that they are smaller than.

I cut colorful straws into different sizes, and the kids in small groups organized them into piles by size. (I forgot to take a picture =[)

Our song of the week was a review of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" which we'll be singing at graduation..... which is only 3 weeks away!! Yikes, I need to get moving!

For our number,  I made a worksheet that reinforces the one to one concept. The kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see.

30 is the highest number that we focus on in detail. (My kids definitely love counting to 100 and higher at lunchtime) We used our math boxes to help us count, and then we worked on their writing of the number and the word for 30.

For our letter activities, we reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about; R, S, and T. These pages came from Letters for Little Learners.

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make into a book. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we work on some of these pages, and each child at the end will have an alphabet book. I like to do these pages, because not only do they get more practice writing the letter, but they also have to finish the sentence on the page, which is really cool. It gets them thinking!

This week the "R" page came from Book 2, the "M" page came from Book 2, and the "N" page came from Book 1.

We also worked more on recognizing our review letters in the tongue twisters from Alphabet and Counting. We used this book to turn our letters into fun animals, but on the pages is also a little tongue twister. I printed it large and made a picture, then laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters that are hidden!

We kept working on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.

Speaking of sight words, from Confessions of a HomeSchooler, I got these great sight word pages. We continued this week with the words "run".

Let it Snow! (O, 12, White)

Our theme last week was"Let it Snow!" We focused on the letter O, number 12 and color white.

  

We read this week: Snow Day by Betsy Meastro
                               Curious George in the Snow by Margret and HA Rey
                               Polar Opposites by Erik Brooks
                               A Silly Snow Day by Michael Coleman
                               The Snowman by Raymond Briggs

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite thing to do in the snow?"

For our theme of the week, we talked about some cold related things related things.

Using oranges (also works for "O") we made snowmen! Our art closet was out of puffy and glitter paint, which is usually what we would use to decorate the snowmen. A little bit of macaroni and googly eyes came in handy. =]

We had a freeze dance party too!

We talked about the color white, and we sang "We Love White" to the tune of "3 Blind Mice"

"We love white, we love white.
That is right, that is right.
Clouds above and milk and glue,
Santa's beard, snow and ghosts say BOO!
Bunnies and paper are white too,
We love white"

When we focus on a color I love to do "color hunts" in our classroom. Each child takes a turn to walk

around the classroom and bring back something that they found that is brown. The tricky thing is that they have to bring different things, no duplicates allowed! Here is what we found for the color white.

We brainstormed together a list of all the different things that are white. We came up with quite a list.

The school had a white shirt day too. Yay, school spirit!!

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 12.

I made these worksheets that reinforces the one to one concept. The kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see.

We played the games "1,2,3" and "Pop". These are both great quick games for the kids to play, and they help them count. These are both from Responsive Classroom.

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter Oo from this book.

We did this worksheet that helps work on letter recognition that I got from this book.

The students wrote in their journals for the letter O. "Oo is for octopus" was definitely the favorite.

We turned a O into a Octopus! This book is great, although this week I made up my own.

The kids cut and colored a book called "Ostrich's House" from this book. Behind every door there is a new animal that starts with "O"!

From the same book, we played letter o bingo. I love this bingo board because it has so many different pictures, that each child's board can be totally unique (if they don't insist on doing the exact same thing as their neighbor =])

In our gym I made an obstacle course full of climbing, jumping, sliding, skipping. Each time the kids went around, I added one more thing for them to do. They loved it!!

Using a worksheet that another teacher gave me, we practiced the short o sound. The kids have to say the name of the picture and decide if it is a short o. If it is, they have to write an "o" on the line.

For our alphabet wall we colored owls to put in our nests from last week.

Here are the words we came up with this week!

A last week I mentioned my math boxes for counting projects. I did a bit of reorganizing this week and turned the original math containers into crayon boxes when for when the kids work with me in a small group. I found these awesome smaller containers at the dollar store this week. They stack wonderfully, and i was able to add more. =]

Up next week: "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and having an alphabet review.