For the past couple of weeks during writing we have been working on opinions.  While everyone seems to have strong opinions about a given topic, we have been working on supporting our opinions with evidence.  We have spent lots of time practicing this orally, often by telling wether or not we like a book that was just read, and using evidence from the story to support our thoughts.  Children also really enjoy convincing me that they should earn class tallies for a given portion of the day, which is dependent on solid evidence.  They have become very creative in their reasoning!
We have practiced writing several opinions as well, including "Which do you like better, recess or choice time?" and "Would you rather have hot lunch or cold lunch?"  As part of this we have worked on wrapping up our writing with a concluding statement.

Angie Barger was with us again on Wednesday morning for some more tracking fun, using plaster tracks to make stories in sand.  This week we have also been sharing each child's shadow puppet show, which tells the story of tracks in the snow.

Some highlights from our week:

Creating models of three dimensional solids with play dough and straws.

Making tracking stories as backdrops for shadow puppet shows.

Decorating bags to hold all of our valentines.

Nature name portraits created in art class, now hanging outside our classroom.

This week we celebrated our 100th day of school.   While Thursday was our official 100th day, with the snow day and early release day our celebration was spread throughout the week.  Our math stations on Tuesday and Wednesday included counting and building with 100 geo-blocks, playing a game to 100, and completing a numbers to 100 scavenger hunt in the classroom.  Children particularly loved the scavenger hunt, which involved wandering the room with a clipboard- ask your child to explain what they were looking for.  During choice time many children chose to count collections of 100 things, using the strategy of ten groups of ten.  We ended our celebration by making 100's crowns and having  a special 100's snack.

While Valentine's Day falls on a Saturday this year, children are welcome to make cards for their classmates to share on the 13th.  I have sent home a list of all of the children in our class- if your child chooses to bring valentines, please make sure there is one for everyone in the class.  We will have a small celebration while we look over our valentines.

In math we have started a unit on geometry.  We have been exploring 2 dimensional shapes in a variety of ways, noting the characteristics of each shape, as well as similarities and differences between shapes.  Children particularly enjoyed using geo-boards to create shapes and making shape pictures by adding details to a given shape (a rectangle can be a truck).

This week we also recently read Grandfather Tang's Story, a Chinese folk tale about two fairy foxes told in tangrams.  The foxes shift their shapes to become different animals throughout the story.  After we read the story each child made their own tangram animal.  Soon we will shift our focus to three dimensional shapes.

On Wednesday we were thrilled to have our Angie and Mary Colleen from ECO, visit us in the classroom to spend the morning learning about animal gaits and tracks.  We began the morning making our own tracks with plaster of paris and rubber molds.  We then spent a good chunk of time learning about different animal gaits and trying each one out, a feat that required lots of concentration and agility!  Ask your child to demonstrate.  After snack we went outside and followed trails of tracks, marking them with colored water so they were easier to see.  Finally we ended the morning thinking about the stories that tracks can tell and creating our own track stories.

Since our return from vacation we have been talking about animals in winter and the various ways animals survive cold weather.  We have read many books on the subject and while some make the distinction between hibernating and being dormant, for the sake of simplicity we are focusing on three things that animals do in winter:  migrate, hibernate, or stay active.  Our discussions have included what it means to migrate and how a woodchuck's true hibernation is a bit different from that of a chipmunk or bear, as well as the many ways that active animals adapt to winter conditions from growing a thicker coat to changing color to blend in with the snow.  We have also been talking about the signs that active animals leave in winter and the stories that these signs can tell.  On Wednesday afternoon we took advantage of having the whole school to ourselves and had a tracking scavenger hunt.  Students worked in small groups to follow six sets of tracks through the school- lots of fun!
Weather permitting, Angie Barger, our ECO leader will join us next Wednesday for some more tracking activities.

REMINDER:  The school wide winter concert is next Thursday at 6:00 p.m. in the gym!

I'm sure that everyone has heard that we spent most of the week in the French room due to a broken heater (thanks to Emily Smith for letting us use her space).  The children handled this change beautifully and in many ways it was a fun adventure.  Despite the disruption we had a very productive week.  Still, it will be a relief to be back in our own room on Tuesday!  

We have been using a new checklist when we finish pieces of writing.  This has helped build awareness of writing conventions, especially leaving spaces between words and using lower case letters except at the beginning of a sentence or for names.  Children really want to check "yes" for each section of the checklist and they seem to be paying more attention to these conventions.

In math we have been spending  time working on sequencing numbers.   Some of the skills we have been practicing include identifying the number that comes just before or just after a given number, sequencing teen numbers, and crossing the decade (29 to 30, 39 to 40 etc.) as we count to 100.

Math games that involve sequencing numbers.

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation.  We have spent time reviewing and practicing expected behaviors as we ease back into routines.  This week we read and compared three different versions of The Mitten by Jan Brett, Jim Aylesworth, and Alvin Tresselt.  We talked about which version we liked best and practiced supporting our opinions with evidence from the text.  Many children preferred the version by Jim Aylesworth because they liked the colorful illustrations, while some preferred the version by Alvin Tresselt because of the unusual animals.  We retold and acted out the story several ways, using our nature name animals and today we spent the morning working on a project to go with the story.

In writing we began exploring informational text, working on All About books.  We talked about the importance of using facts (cats have four legs instead of cats are cute) and making sure all of our facts are about one topic.  Children have been writing about a variety of topics from jousting, to puffer fish, to the NHL.  Coming back after twelve days off takes a lot of energy for young children- I hope everyone has a restful weekend!