Reading Buddies

We've started back up with Reading Buddies! On Wednesday, Mrs. Brown's 2nd grade class comes to read with us and on Friday, Mrs. Wallace's 2nd grade class comes to read with us. The kids are so excited when the older kids come to read and are spending some of their free time practicing their reading so they can read to second grade when they come in.

Big thanks to Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Wallace for taking time out of their busy schedules so their kids can read with our class.

A Tumbleweed?

A couple weeks ago I was walking down the hallway and saw a tumbleweed outside so, naturally, I grabbed it! Last Friday, we finally decided what we were going to do with it ... write about it! We put it in the middle of the room and the kids wrote about where they thought it came from.

We had to get a picture with the tumbleweed before we took it back outside.

What's that word?

Since we have 4 different reading and writing stations every day, there are times I forget to take pictures of all 20 reading and writing stations. They still work VERY hard (which is nothing new). Here are some of the things the kids did this past week.

Sorting words by digraph and writing the words after they sorted them.

 

Writing facts about George Washington in a bubble map.

Sorting words by vowel sound and writing the words in the correct columns.

Some of the groups this week worked on adding silent e to words to change them to new words. The read, wrote, changed and reread their words.

Constellations!

I love, love, LOVE when we start talking about space! This past week in science we talked about constellations. We looked at constellations on cards that we held up to the light, matched constellations on cards with the ones in our bathroom, looked through toilet paper telescopes and created our own constellations!

Our bathroom with planets, starts and a few constellations.

Wednesday I told the kids we were going outside to draw constellations (which we were all excited about)! When we got outside I told them to have at it, but ... I got confused looks. The kids told me they couldn't draw constellations during the day time because the light from the sun was so bright it was blocking the light from the stars. Duh! Why didn't I know that? Good thing I have these smart cookies to educate me! :)

After we went inside I told the kids to figure out a way to draw the constellations we have been looking at. I told them to come up with their own ideas, but I was not going to tell them how to do it.

She placed her constellation card on her paper and traced inside the dots.

He looked at the constellation and copied what he saw.

Thursday, the kids used black construction paper, silver star stickers and white crayons to create their own constellations. The thing I loved seeing more than their artistic creativity in making constellations was the names they came up with for their constellations!

Everyone got black paper, 12 star stickers and a white crayon.

"The Zig Zag of the Human"

"The Love of The World"

"Elephant" and "Star Flower"

"The Big Dipper"

Friday, we used the iPads in groups to look at constellations using the apps "Sky Map" and "Sky View". both of these apps show where constellations, planets, the moon and the sun are at all times during the day based on your location. Sky View shows the constellations with their picture outlines (some constellations are hard to see with just the stars.)

 

Some of the constellations the kids saw they recognized from the cards, telescopes and the bathroom and were naming some of them!

Math, math, math!

Last week in math, we covered a few different areas.

At my table last week, we built 5 different math problems using linking cubes and place value mats. The kids had to use two different colors to show the two addends they were adding in the math problem.

Using linking cubes to build math problems.

Finding and cutting out the sum.

The kids' second station this week was sorting pictures into heavy and light categories. They had 8 different pictures they had to sort on their mats.

Sorting light and heavy pictures.

When they finished, they raced and had others check their work.

Their third station this week was filling in the missing numbers in a row of numbers. Some numbers were missing before and some were missing after. The kids had to do number anywhere from 1 to 30.

Filling in the missing number

There fourth station last week was comparing the weight of different objects from the math shelf.

Making a prediction about which objects will be heavier.

They were right!

Next week we will be doing more with measurement looking at the different types of measurement tools.