What a Day!

Today was a very busy day! Our word of the day was "not". The word was a rule follower. The homonym for "not" is "knot". Our word of the day was a popular word family. We recorded the words on the "pot of -ot". We also learned that "not" is a CVC word. That means that it is a consonant-vowel-consonant word. Mrs. Myers tested us on our key ring words this morning. Check in our orange folder tonight to see how we did. After recess we had math. We started new math centers. In the first center, we are working on growing patterns. In the second center, we are counting by 5's. The third center is meeting with Mrs. Myers. She is checking to see if we can count by 2's and 5's. She is also working with us on repeating and growing patterns. In our fourth center, we are working with a partner to write and count by 2's, 5's, and 10's. We will finish up math centers tomorrow morning. After lunch, we heard the story, Nuts To You. The author was Lois Ehlert. Mrs. Myers has many stories in her classroom library by this author. In our lesson, we talked more about root words and endings. Today we looked for the -ing and the -ed ending in story. We did a good job. We found out that the CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words we learned about in the morning need a "twin" when you add an ending to it. After our lesson, we worked independently on an ending paper. Then it was time for guided reading and reading workshop. Some of us are beginning to finish our first reading workshop packet. You will see it soon . We had centertime next. We finished our fourth center. In the art center, we were allowed to spray paint another color onto our leave. Then, it was writing workshop time. We loved our writing time today. We reviewed FOCUS and we wrote a focused riddle about some part of fall. (a fall sight, fall holiday, fall activity) We had to write 5 clues to describe it. The first couple clues were supposed to be hard and then they were supposed to get easier. Mrs. Myers is making them into a book. First, we are going to play a game to see if the other students can guess our fall thing. If they do, we know we had a good FOCUS. Then, our book will go in the library center. We are so excited! After our last recess we had a fire drill. We got out safely, but Mrs. Myers was very upset with our self-control. We forgot all the rules that we just practiced! Some of us were running. We forgot where to stop outside the building. We were talking on the way outside. We are going to do much better next time! We ended the day with phys. ed. Don't forget that tomorrow is a half day! :)

More Fall Fun!

Today was Madison's birthday. We sang to her first thing in the morning! Our word of the day today was "by". It was a rule follower, because we learned the new rule that "y" sometimes says the sound of "i" at the end of a word. This word family was very popular. We recorded the words on the "cry of -y". There were some other ways to write this word family, too. The word "by" is a homonyn. with the words "bye" and "buy". We thought it was cool that the word "by" rhymes with Guy's name. After library and recess, we went to Mrs. Lauber's room. We heard the story, Earl the Squirrel. It was by Don Freeman, the author of the Cordoroy books. It was such a great story. After the story, we sequenced the events on picture cards. We practiced retelling the story using these pictures. Ask me to retell the story to you tonight. Then, it was time for reading workshop. That's our favorite. At writing workshop time today, we got to meet with Mrs. Lauber's boys and girls again and use the computers. We reviewed how good authors write "focused" stories. We typed our "fun in the fall" stories on the computer. The, we learned to change the font and the size and print them. We illustrated our stories for a focused, class book. At the end of writing time, we had a few minutes to squeeze in a handwriting lesson for letter "Oo". It's an easy letter. After recess, we had centertime. In the art center, we got to spray paint our leaf. Tomorrow, we will get to paint our leaf another color. It was a great day. Sorry again for the late blog - more technical problems!

Focused on Fall

Our word of the day today was "word". It was a rule breaker, because "or" said the sound of "er", "ir" or "ur". It was not a popular word family. In was a noun - a naming word. In math, we estimated acorns. Estimation is making a smart guess. We compared ten acorns to our actual estimation. Grace and Mrs. Myers were just right. We had 47 acorns in our jar. After math, we had library, lunch, and recess. Then, Mrs. Myers read us a story called Fresh Fall Leaves. We listened for the verbs in the story. We noticed that all of the verbs had an -ing ending. This means the verb is happening in the present tense - right now! We learned that the verb is called the root word when it has an ending on it. We also learned that sometimes a verb changes when we add an ending. Sometimes we have to add a twin letter to keep the vowels apart. Sometimes we have to kick the magic e away, because the ending does his job. We did a worksheet to match root words and endings. Then we had guided reading and reading workshop. We had centertime next. Mrs. Myers introduced the first step of the art center. We traced and cut giant fall leaves. When it was time for writing workshop, we went to Mrs. Lauber's room. We learned about FOCUS. Focus is like using a camera to block out all of the other things in the picture and zoom into one main subject. In writing, we pick our the main idea of the story and zoom down to only tell the details about that subject. We practiced listening to Mrs. Lauber and Mrs. Myers tell stories. When they lost their focus, we gave them the "stop" signal. Then, we wrote a focused sentence about "fun in fall" with a partner. We will be working on focus all week. At the end of the day, we had an assembly. Students from the high school performed a play for us. It was funny! We also had a guest reader - Ryan Fahs. We ended the day with Junie B. Jones! YEAH!

Fall into Fall

I apologize again for the lateness of this blog. We are truly having technical difficulties getting into the google server. We were really excited to begin our fall theme today. We began the day telling our favorite fall activities. We will make a graph later in the week. Our word of the day today was "had". It was a rule follower. It was popular, too. We wrote the -ad word family on the "sad dad". This word is closely related to his "brothers" have and has. Today's word happened already - past tense. After word of the day, we met in Mrs. Lauber's room for our social studies lesson. Mrs. Lauber and Mrs. Myers each read us a nonfiction book about fall. They both had mostly facts, but a few opinions about fall. We practiced telling fact and opinion statements. For morning work tomorrow, we will write one fact and one opinion about fall. After that, we went to recess. Then, it was time for math. We warmed up for math by playing a new skip counting game. To help us practice counting by 5's, Mrs. Myers had us make a circle. Then she handed out cards with the numbers from 5 to 100 (skip counting by 5's). We had to put ourselves in order by 5's while she timed us. The first time was a disaster. It took us 2:43 seconds. The second time, it only took us 40 seconds. That is the new record. We are going to play this game everyday this week at morning meeting to see if we can beat this record. After we were all warmed up, we used leaved to make repeating and growing patterns. Both kinds of patterns begin the same, but a repeating pattern stays the same, where a growing pattern changes and gets bigger. We worked with a partner to make growing patterns with our cubes, and then we compared each groups patterns. Last, we made repeating and growing patterns on a worksheet. By then, it was already lunch. After recess, we read another story with Mrs. Lauber's class. Before the story, we worked in pairs. Mrs. Myers gave us each a leave with a fall vocabulary word. We sorted the word into a category - fall sights, fall weather, fall activities, fall holidays. Then, we listened to the story, Autumn Leaves. After the story, we check our sort. We only had to change a few things. Then, we each wrote a page for our class book, In the Fall. After our lesson, we had a new center tour for our fall language arts centers. In the games center, we are sorting leaves onto word family trees by picture. We are practicing the -at, -and, and -it families. In the magnetic letters center, we are spelling word of the day words on leaves by matching the letters. When we record the answers, we have to fill in the missing letters and use the words in a sentence. In the listening center, we are listening to the story, The Nutty Nutcatchers. We are drawing, writing, and citing our favorite part in the book. The last center is the poetry center. It is a new fall poem called Autumn. We each get to take a turn leading our group in the poem. We even get to use Mrs. Myers' pointer. After we all read the poem together, we are making a personal connection to something in the poem and writing about it in our folder. Tomorrow the art center will open! After centers, Mrs. Myers taught us how to do "making words". She handed out letters and we colored them red if they were vowels and blue if they were consonants. Then, we cut our letters apart and began making and sharing two letter words. Then we did the same with three letter words. At the end o the lesson, Mrs. Myers asked us to make the "super jumbo bonus word"! We used all of our letters to make the word that matched Mrs. Myers' clues. The word was "falling". Madison had the word first! At the end of the lesson, we read the list of words that we made. Then, Mrs. Myers played the word detective game with us. She gave a clue and we made the word from the list that matched her clue. It was fun. We can't wait until next week when we get to do "making words" again! Finally, it was time for art! Check out the cool art project we made today! More fall fun tomorrow!

Good-Bye Zoo

It is the end of zoo week, and boy are we exhausted! Our word of the day today was "one". It was a CRAZY rule breaker! The word family was popular, but it looked very different - "-un". We recorded the words on the "sun of -un". Today's word was a homonym for the word "won". Later in the morning, we had a guidance lesson with Miss Anderson. Check my mail today for a packet from Miss Anderson. I have lots to tell you. At the end of the morning, we had a quick math lesson. We used "Lester" the less than alligator and "Grant" the greater than alligator to look at numbers on our hundred's chart. We looked for the greater number and the number that was less. We also practiced counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. After lunch, we used the computers from the cart. We worked with a partner from Mrs. Lauber's class to type about the animal Mrs. Myers gave us a picture of from the zoo yesterday. We typed the habitat the animal lives in and one fact we learned from the naturalist yesterday. We are going to put all of our facts together into a class book. Look for the book to come home soon. We will be taking turns sharing it with our families. After our writing time, Mrs. Myers read us a silly story, An Animal Strike at the Zoo. We learned that sometimes books have cause and effect relationships. We looked at cause and effect in our own lives. Then, we worked in teams to match the cause and effect events in the story. It was easy. The day was moving fast. We had music and recess. At the end of the day, we visited our fourth center. We were a little sloppy today. We need to work on following ALL the directions on our center next week. We are ready for a rest over the weekend! GO PENN STATE!!! Our theme next week is fall!

Zoo America

Today our class went to Zoo America in Hershey, PA. It was fun learning about animals and their habitats. We had tour guide take us around the zoo to each habitat. Her name was Christy. The first habitat we looked at was in a building. It was the swamp. We looked at a pink bird called a Spoonbill. We saw turtle swimming. He had a funny nose. We saw an armadillo. We saw two alligators and one crocodile. We didn't know if they were real at first, because they didn't move much. We learned that the difference between an alligator and a crocodile was the face. The next habitat we visited was the desert. In the desert, we saw rattlesnakes, spotted skunks, tarantula, tortoises, desert fox and vampire bats. We also saw the bats getting fed their blood. After the desert, we left for the Eastern Woodlands. We saw bobcats, river otters, barn owls, and bears. We went to the Rocky Mountain Grasslands. We didn't see the prairie dogs, because they were underground. We were disappointed. We did see bison, mountain lions, elk, vultures, wolves, falcons, deer, turkey, and an eagle. At the last habitat, the North Woods, we saw the porcupine, the lynx, and swans. We learned so many facts and had a lot of time to ask questions. Our naturalist woke many of the animals up and talked about how they communicate differently than humans. We were so hungry at the end of the tour, so we headed straight for the lunch tables to eat. After lunch, we went to Chocolate World to take the chocolate tour. We ended the day with a chocolate treat! Back at school, we were so tired. We ended the day with our movie time. We watched a movie about zoo animals. What a great day! A special thanks to Mrs. Buzynski for helping Mrs. Myers all day long. She was a great volunteer.

Animals at the Zoo

Our word of the day today was "or". It was a rule follower, but it was the new bossy r rule. It was a very popular word family, but most of the words were spelled different. After calendar, we had a lesson on the habitats of North America. We learned that North America is made of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. We sorted the animals into five habitats that we will see tomorrow. (Sonoran Desert, The Swamp, North Woods, Eastern Woodlands, Rocky Mountain Grasslands ) Tomorrow, we will look at those animals at the trip to Zoo America. In math today, we used the hundred's chart to look for patterns in numbers. We highlighted our chart to show the ways to count by 2's, 5's, and 10's. We played a game around the classroom to practice counting. Dawson and Elle were the winners of a bean. I need to practice counting by 2's and 5's each night before bed, until I can do it perfectly. After lunch and recess, we listened to a story called, Never EVER Shout in the Zoo. It was so funny! We listened for the main idea of the story. We learned that an author writes details to support the main idea. We made a chart that looks like a table to show the main idea and supporting details. Check it out in my mail today! Then, we had guided reading and reading workshop and centertime. After that, it was time to take the district writing assessment. We worked so hard to write our best stories. We thought about the story's focus, content, organization, and proofreading. Our practice stories from yesterday are in our mail. Enjoy them tonight! At the end of writing time, we were exhausted. Luckily, we only had phys. ed. left to end the day! YEAH! Just a reminder, we need to pack our lunch in a disposable bag tomorrow, if we did not order it from the cafeteria. We should wear our zoo t-shirts tomorrow with layers. We are so excited!