I was away at an all day math meeting yesterday, and it was so nice to be back in the classroom today!  There is nothing like sitting for most of the day to make me appreciate the bustle of the classroom.  We spent some time playing a new math game called bump today.  While we practiced adding two dice together, but more importantly worked on being good partners and good sports.  We also did some snowman problem solving and began a snowman project based on the book Snowballs by Lois Ehlert.

This afternoon while we were partner reading using books from our classroom library, using sticky notes to mark pages that we wanted to share because they were funny, exciting, or interesting in some other way.  A pair of partners approached me breathless with excitement.  They had marked a page because they could read the words in this book that was a "real" book (rather than one of the little leveled books that we use to practice reading words).  Their excitement was contagious as they shared the page and read it together to the class, and this led us to a discussion of the pay off for all of the hard work we do, learning sight words, using our fingers to point to words, getting our mouths ready with beginning sounds, and making sure we practice reading in some capacity every day- we are all really learning to read!

A belated thank you to everyone for coming to conferences.  I appreciate the extra effort it can take to make an evening meeting!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday- based on children's writing it sounds like you did.

This week we spent some time learning about Hanukkah.  We read lots of Hanukkah stories, compared Hanukkah to Christmas, noting lots of similarities between the two, and played dreidel with our third and fourth grade partners.  Eliana also very graciously helped everyone make a candle.  Next week we will shift our focus to Kwanzaa.

We are also wrapping up our exploration of rocks this week.  Today we used clay to model the rock cycle and the constant changes that rocks undergo.  We also created a rock story with movement to help us remember this cycle.

It felt really good to return to the forest for ECO on Wednesday.   The last several sessions we have been breaking into small groups and working through stations.  I think cooking over the fire is definitely a favorite- this week we roasted apples.  The weather looks good for next Wednesday as well, and although it is an early release day we will have ECO.

Thank you for helping your child come to school with appropriate clothing for going outside.   Hopefully the snow will return soon, and recess is much more enjoyable when we are all warm and dry or as dry as we can be!

Bees wax candles.

A group effort- nearly everyone in the class helped create this!

Walking in the forest.