May 18th--23rd

Hello families!

So sorry about the no blog situation last week. We had a blast and we were so busy I forgot! Hopefully everyone received their letter "home from camp." Seeing everyone sitting in the tent was a hoot.

It is only Tuesday and we have been non stop. Each day we have been popping a balloon with a fun activity. Today it was a dance party! We had a blast. We also got to sit wherever we wanted at lunch and snack this week. Cannot wait to see what is left for the next 10 days of school!

This week we have been putting the finishing touches on our bare books. We filled out interview questions that asked age, hobby, future job possibilities and who the books would be dedicated to. We also are enjoying all of our math manipulatives and free choice centers as those will change next year! We have been playing with the pattern blocks, c- rods, 10 frames, dominos etc. We have been working on a couple of songs to sing at our end of year party and we worked on our leveled books today. Please read these with your child this week! We will start reviewing phonograms more intensely this week too.  We have learned so many rules about sounds.

I am hopefully going to finish assessments this week and will plan to offer conferences for those that need them next week. If you are interested in meeting, please email me and we will schedule a time to do so.

Our end of year party is still set for June 2nd at 1:30 in our classroom. This is where we will reveal our bare books too! We will have light lunch for the kids, a slide show, bare books and sing a few songs. Bring your tissues! :)

No school on Monday for Memorial Day. Don't forget!

Hope you have a great week!
Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

May 4th-7th

Hello families!

We are still so proud of our play last week. Thanks again for all your help! Thankfully this week we got back to "normal." As normal as you can get for the last full month of school anyways!

We worked really hard on a special mothers day card and gift. Hopefully everyone makes it home with theirs! Look for this in the red folder.

Reader's Workshop:

We are almost finished with everyone's editing! Yahoo! This has taken forever, but has been so worth it. We cannot wait to reveal the books on June 2nd. Everyone has almost gotten to the point of coloring, decorating and adding pizazz. The fun part! The writing was fun too though. We have been encouraging everyone to self edit and correct their own punctuation and capitalization before meeting with an adult and it has been awesome. We have also had lots of peer editing taking place too. We got back to leveled readers, word work and word study this week too. I believe the first grade team decided that next week will be the last week for word study and leveled readers. We will double check and let you know for sure when that is. Cannot believe we are already to this point.

Phonogram review this week was: wh, er, ck, ee, oo, ow, ou, g and th
Words this week were: think, roll, stone, foot, dance, lift, page, after, show and thank
Our spell check was today because we do not have school tomorrow!

Math Workshop:

This week we pulled out the pattern blocks and attribute blocks to sort, describe, categorize etc. This is our fun way of reviewing geometry in math tubs. We are also able to do lots of assessments as we are walking around listening to who knows the information well and who needs a quick review before the end of the year. Math tubs create some of the most authentic math conversations I have ever heard! So this is a great way to see what lessons we need to teach again before the end of the year. We are sorting by size, shape, color, 2D, 3D, and thickness. Some kids are also choosing to make patterns and create other things out of the shapes by putting them together.

Thematic Centers:

This week we studied our last author Kevin Henkes. We will be finishing up next week. We read a TON of books written by him and enjoy the hidden morals that are in his stories. The illustrations are beautiful too and gave us lots of ideas for our own bare books. We read Wimberly Worried, Lily's Purple Plastic Purse, Lily's Big Day, Oh No!, Chrysanthemum, Chester's Way and Kittens First Full Moon. We will read Bailey Goes Camping and have a full camping day (in the classroom) next week complete with a tent, s'mores, hot dogs and sleeping bags. If anyone has a tent that we can borrow, let me know! The Schultz's have not begun camping adventures yet. We rotated through 4 main centers:

1. An adult reads Chrysanthemum while the children take their cut out paper heart and crinkle it up every time someone says something mean and flatten it out each time someone says something nice in the book. Then you glue the poem in the center of the heart.
2. We made a Wimberly character from Wimberly worried and our writing piece to go with it was "Wimberly worried about...." "I worry about...."
3. Make a purple purse from Lily's Purple Plastic Purse and record what happened throughout the story (first, middle and last).
4. Write Chrysanthemum and then record your name comparing the two. Then find three friends and record/compare your name to those new names.

We are finished with our handwriting books!! We could not be more thrilled!

We are also continuing to work in our day books. We are still gluing songs, poems and other writing pieces in there. These will not go home until the very last day.

Remember there is no school this tomorrow or next Friday or Memorial Day. Don't forget that if you place a scholastic order you need to send me an email or I won't know about it! I do not get notifications when someone places an order. Our gem mining field trip is NEXT TUESDAY! If you want to go with us, just sign up! Please remember that if you are a chaperone, your child must ride with you to and from the gem mine.

Our end of year party is still set for June 2nd at 1:30 in our classroom. We will reveal our bare books, have a snack, watch a slide show and reflect on the past two years. No crying allowed! :)

Our last trip to the Laurel's was great! We sang our play songs, read books and colored lots of pictures for the residents. They cannot believe how big everyone is getting!

Have a great long weekend!
Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz