This week!

Waiting for the ball to be thrown back over the fence!

 Dancing to the Olympic theme song in music!

Landon and I share a strong passion for Steph Curry. Go Warriors! 

Math tub fun!

Since we are studying basketball this week, Mr. Jay (CSD's varsity ladies head coach/Ms. Alicia's husband) came to talk to us about the sport. He even brought one of his players and some jerseys to try on!  How cool?  Thanks Mr. Jay and Courtney! He talked about hard work paying off in the end and also taught us some fundamentals of the game.

Wow, what a week! It has been another great but busy week.

Reader's Workshop:

This was our second week of building up stamina for reading independently and setting up reader's workshop. Today we read independently for 20 minutes without stopping. Yahoo! We have slowly added 2 minutes to our total time reading each day. We have also been working hard on getting all of our reading assessments done so that we can start guided reading groups soon. Everyone has a book bin that they keep in their cubby. Each week, new books are picked! We hope to start sending home leveled books next week. We also worked on writing during readers workshop.

Math Workshop:

We have LOTS of new games this year! Over the past two weeks we have moved from exploring manipulatives to playing math games. Our top three favorites this week are explained below. But we have several more in the tubs.

Penny Game:
Roll a die and whatever number it lands on, collect that many pennies. Each partner rolls and collects until all the pennies are gone. At the end, flip the more or less tile to see who wins. If the tile lands on "more" then the player with the higher number of pennies wins. If the tile lands on "less" then the player with fewer pennies wins.

Rock, Paper, Scissors
Play this traditional game but the winner records what they win with on a tally sheet. The tricky part about tallies is remembering that the fifth tally crosses over the fourth tally mark. Counting by 5's is much more efficient than by 1's.

Compare
Both players flash number cards at the same time. The player with the higher number keeps both cards. The player with all the cards at the end is the winner. A challenge would be to flash two or three cards and add the numbers together. Same rules apply.

Thematic Centers:
Our very first unit that we are working on is Sports/Famous Athletes. We usually start with fairytales but we wanted to tie in the Olympics with this unit so we started it earlier. Last week we studied Wilma Rudolph and track. This week we studied basketball and Michael Jordan. We have learned that these famous athletes overcame a lot before they were successful. We rotated through 4 centers again this week.

1. Illustrate the Michael Jordan biography mini book. There were some hard words in that book but working together as a team helped get the job done.
2. Design a basketball jersey (we kept these at school). Then, fill out the paperwork to go with it breaking it apart in tens and ones using base ten blocks.
3. Review and practice the top 4 basketball passes then illustrate them.
4. Complete the basketball word search. This is a great way to review vocabulary words we are discussing and practice those reading skills.

Writer's Workshop:

This month's theme is "small moments." Rather than writing about a series of events, choose one small topic to write about. Of course, not everyone chose to write a small moment writing piece. And that's ok! We just want to be excited about writing! We also received our personal word walls and started filling in our words we may need for writing this year.

Science:

Last week we did the skittles science experiment and had a blast. What happened when we placed warm water on skittles?? Ask your child. :) PS: Normally we love to have parent volunteers for Sci Fri, but because we aren't starting volunteers until after Labor Day, we decided to kick off our science studies with this exciting experiment!


**I am really hoping to start word study, park trips and parent volunteers after Labor Day. Because our first week back to school after Labor Day is only 4 days and I will be out of town through Tuesday, we will most likely start all of that the second week after Labor Day. I am also hoping to have all assessments done by tomorrow. That would mean next week we could start pulling our small group math and reading groups!

Have a great weekend and please continue to encourage your child to get rest each night. There has been lots of yawning at afternoon carpool!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz