This morning we reviewed the events of Good Friday and put special stickers on our page to help recall the events. We discussed how Jesus forgives us too like He did the thief on the cross that asked Jesus to remember him. In our special Holy Week books the students drew an angel that gave the news on Easter morning that Jesus is alive. Then the students learned how God has a job for us to do while we are waiting for Him to take us to heaven. We are to tell the Good News to everyone we can that Jesus is our Savior and that He is the way to heaven. The kids drew Jesus ascending into heaven and then drew His disciples and others going around spreading the Good News. May we all take that job to heart and share the joy that we have in Jesus so others may have the hope of eternal life in heaven.
During our mini lesson today for literacy centers the students wrote reasons for the opinion they chose. I was pleased with their thinking today and tomorrow we look forward to giving the students time to share their opinions as they try to persuade their friends. The students have been doing a fantastic job on writing for many different purposes such as fiction, nonfiction, persuasive, encouragement, surveys, advertisement, etc. We can't wait to share some special stories with you during our Authors' Tea in May. They continued to work hard during our oviparous centers and have been learning a lot about many creatures that hatch from eggs. In the afternoon we continued our oviparous study and made little books about fish and reptiles. Then we had fun learning about a frog's life. We sequenced the stages of a frog's life and put them on little viewer strips. We worked on some subtraction story problems this afternoon as well. The students rolled some dice to choose how many creatures would be in the bay at the beginning of their story. Then they rolled again to see how many creatures swam away. They drew pictures to model the story and then made subtraction number sentences to show what happened and how many creatures were left in the bay. We also read an interesting book with unique text and graphic features where the author had more than one purpose in mind for the story. As we read Pie in the Sky, we learned that not only did the author have a fiction story in mind, but the book gave information about wildlife, along with a recipe to make cherry pie. We explored where the author put text into the graphics. Then we sequenced the steps to make a cherry pie. We were hungry for pie after that! This week we are learning about the different events that happened during Holy Week. The students are making a book to help them remember these events and we add different things each day to our books. This week we added trees to the garden where Jesus prayed. We drew the high priest that questioned Jesus before He met with the Roman governor. Then we drew the cross and the crown of thorns.
During the mini lessons during literacy centers this week the students are learning how to do persuasive writing. They are learning about opinions and today they made a list of topics that could be compared for some future opinion writings. The literacy centers are giving the students continued practice in blends, long and short vowels, real and nonsense CVC words, and writing questions and sentences in proper form. We are taking a couple of weeks to learn about oviparous creatures. Students are making little books where a person can guess what oviparous creature is hiding. They are also making some pond pictures using a combination of chalk and paint. We had fun watching some special videos of some creatures hatch out of eggs. We watched chicks, turtles, and caterpillars hatch out of eggs. It was also fun to watch the caterpillars change into butterflies and watch as one emerged from a chrysalis. Students are also using their creativity to write stories about oviparous creatures. Today we had fun learning how to do the bunny hop and the chicken dance. It takes a lot of coordination to move in sync with the music and with a partner. We had fun and also got some great exercise. What a day! Mrs. Strege came to share a snake skin with us. She thought about sharing it with us because of the snake mentioned in the children's message at church this past weekend. She also gave us some books to keep in our classroom. They are called Do You Know Who Jesus Is? We read them together with her and we are having fun using them as we make our own books to study some of the main events that happened during Holy Week. Thanks Mrs. Strege! We have been learning about words that describe nouns and other words that help out verbs during our mini lessons this week. Today students could feed a pretend mouse and give it some cheese if they could think of an adverb that told how, when, or where about the verb. We learned that quite a few adverbs end in -ly. Using adjectives and adverbs in our sentences make our writing more descriptive and helps to paint a picture in the reader's mind. Our literacy centers this week help the students to practice reading CVC words fluently. I have posted a video of one example of how kids time each other and try to read as many strips of CVC words as they can before the timer is up. Another table helps the kids to practice beginning blends and they had to match these as they used a magnifying glass for fun. They had the mystery word "clover" at the red table and they had to make a sentence with that word using proper form. At the writing table the students wrote a safety rule that Officer Buckle may want to use and then they had fun creating that character from the book. Finally the students had fun putting words in order to make a spring poem. This week we had fun studying the rain forest and we have watched a number of videos and listened to some wonderful books to help us learn how to take care of this beautiful part of God's creation. It was fun to see and hear animals and discuss the layers where they live. They made a little page with the layers and some animals that they can manipulate to see if they remember where they live. At the green table they have been making a "Rain on the Green Grass" book. They are changing the poem as they pick new places or things from a dictionary to write and draw where or what the rain could land on next. The students have also created quite a few creative rain forest stories in their journals. At the yellow table the students are playing "rainbow math" and they are having fun rolling the dice to see if they can get sums from 2-12. One of the most exciting things the kids did this week was to fly their kites. Finally today the wind was not too strong and many had success flying their kites. They were sent home so that you can enjoy them over spring break. |
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