April 25th-29th

Claire working on her ocean layers book.

Will, Margot and Lily playing in the water tub with the sea creatures.

Ms. Alicia working on bare books with Josephine, Cole, William, Bryson and Augie!

Michael, Liam, Lauren and Landon playing "Tenzie."

Tripp and Sophie playing in the sensory tub. Right now we have sand, sand toys and shells.

Candace, Allison, Ella and Katherine LOVE dramatic play! 

Announcements:

No school: April 29th
Nursing Home Field Trip: May 3rd
Oceans Play: May 12th at 11:00 in the middle school black box

Hello!

Thematic Centers:

We are still studying the ocean and what lives in it, the layers of the ocean etc. This week we studied the coral reef and also learned about the sea turtle and the tiger shark since those two animals are our new class "pets." Yes, we have class pets now! Each child will have a turn to take home one of our stuffed sea creatures and spend one night with it. Directions will be in the sea creatures cage. Please keep the pet for ONE NIGHT.

We rotated through 3 centers this week since it is a short week!

1. Paint your play costume!
2. Review play lines.
3. Read and illustrate your Layers of the Ocean book.

**We added a second sensory tub and filled it with water and sea animals.

Math Workshop:

We went out on the playground and stretched a piece of yarn the length of a blue whale and a humpback whale. The blue whale measures 100 feet long so this yarn stretched around more than half of the playground. It is the largest creature in the sea. The humpback whale measures 50 feet and was still very large. It is neat to see how big these creatures are compared to our height.

We also played two new games this week.

1. Double compare: Each player (up to 4) gets a stack of cards with numbers. Count 123 and then flip the top two cards over. Add the two numbers together. The player with the highest sum keeps all the cards.

2. Racing Bears: 2 players are working together to collect 10 buttons. There are 4 bears at the bottom of the game board. Roll the dice and move the bear that many spaces. Each bear can move 10 spaces before landing on a button. You can also decompose the number into two desperate numbers in order to collect a button faster. Example: I roll a 6. I could move one of my bears 4 spaces so I could collect a button and since I have 2 spaces leftover to move, I would move a different bear 2 spaces. Each time someone collects a button, they shout how many more they need to get to 10.

Reader's Workshop:

This week we wrote letters to mail at the post office! We also received guided reading books. We learned about "getting our mouth ready" while reading. We look at the first letter of the unknown word and think of the sound that the letter makes. Then we read the sentence with the first letter sound that they knew and think of what the word might be. Books need to be returned Monday because we do not have school Friday.

No sight word this week! We will resume sight words next week when we have a 5 day week and we aren't writing letters. :)

Writer's Workshop:

We are working on bare books and editing our top 5 favorite books to go in our bare books.

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Schultz