Back to the classroom!

It has been great to be back to the classroom with the children the last two days. We have been so busy working hard and remembering the rules! :)

Yesterday we learned about poetry by reading many examples. We also wrote an acrostic poem together about spring. Here it is!
S wimming
P lanting flowers
R un and play tag
I t is 2010!
N ight is cold
G rass
Today children tried writing their own acrostic poem about spring, and next week we will continue doing poetry. Some of the things the kids have noticed about poetry are: it can be hard to think of ideas, and sometimes ideas come fast and sometimes it takes a while.

Today we also talked a lot about healthy food and snacks. We've been reading a lot of books and talking a lot about what it means to be healthy, and today we looked at the pyramid and the kids were very interested in their own snacks and where they fall in the groups. They were surprised how much sugar is in all of their snacks!!

Reading Books

Every day after snack the children read books from our class library until everyone is finished. We have the one shelf that always has books from the library about whatever we are learning about. With our "being healthy" theme, a couple of the books are about yoga. The kids are having a lot of fun reading through and trying the poses :)

Document Camera!

Today I learned how to use a new technology tool! It is a document camera that projects an image (from a book, piece of paper, or anything!) with full color. We used it this morning to look at last week's problem solver and all the different ways that children made diagrams. We had a big discussion about how different each diagram looked but how they all were able to solve the problem. It was really neat- the children were engaged, active, and excited. We came to our seats after to do a new problem solver and children used what they had learned from other students' work! It was really amazing.

Friday

On Friday Walter Nardelli came to read a Red Clover book to our class. He read How to Heal a Broken Wing, and Mrs. Macnee's class came to join us!


We also tasted maple syrup (real and fake) and EVERYONE liked the real. That hardly ever happens believe it or not!

Writer's Workshop

This morning in Writer's Workshop we started a new theme of "How-to" books. The kids think of something they know how to do really well, and write down the steps of how to do it. They were full of ideas some of them including: How to ride a bike (or scooter, or motorcycle), play with a baby brother, read a book, build a lego structure, etc!
It was cute and very motivating for them- we are going to save them to share soon!