Week 17 in Review

Greetings and Happy New Year from Room 119!  We had a busy week with just four days due to cold temperatures on Thursday.  Although we were not in school on Thursday, that did not stop us from being thoughtful.  Our Thoughtful Thursday Project went out to Evan's family.  You can see it by clicking HERE.  As you know we have different "Learning Targets" that we hope to meet each day.  Mrs. D. added an "Attitude Target", something to help us fill other buckets and use coping skills if we are down.  So far it's been fun!

When we came back to school in the new year, many of us looked different!  A lot of us lost teeth and Nolan lost his FIRST tooth!  If you're waiting on the Tooth Tote, it may take a while.  There were many adventures over the break!

In math we practiced using tools like Rekenreks to help us with our math.  We are also learning about tens and ones.  Most of us did really well with tens and ones riddles and we enjoyed doing them.  More on that next week!

Mrs. D. began reading us a new chapter book and this one has NO pictures, but the words do an excellent job painting pictures in our minds.  We are reading "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" which is a wonderful book and quite different from the movie.  If we haven't seen the movie yet, please don't let us watch it until AFTER we're done with the book.  We also practiced visualizing and drew what we saw happening in text.  Mrs. D. put it to a video that you can view by clicking HERE.

 We were SO excited to get back into our Writer's Notebooks!  Even after the long break, most of us remembered our targets and did a great job! Remember to ask us what our target is and help us reach it on our writing homework too!

We continue to learn about digraphs (two letters that make one sound).  This week we went on a hunt for "Wh" words that make the sounds "W".  We learned that sometimes "Wh" can make an "H" sounds like in "who" or "whole."  Language can be so tricky!

We've been reading a lot and Mrs. D. has begun testing us.  She's finished up with about 6 of us.  It's a slow process, but so far everyone she has tested has made great progress.  Remember to keep reading those paper books at home!

In Social Studies we looked at things in our environment that were natural and those that were man-made. We had fun imagining different places we've been (playground, neighborhood, store) and putting things we 'saw' into the two categories.

 Mrs. D. heard about another little boy who could use some love so we did a second Thoughtful Thursday project with our fifth grade buddies where we made "High Fives" for 11 year old Cole who is in the hospital.  We are hoping that our hand pictures and nice messages will bring some color to his room!

 And of course we ended the week with a wonderful Mystery Reader!  Norelle's mom came in and read an excellent book to us called, "Of Thee I Sing" by President Obama.  It was an excellent book and mentioned many famous people, one of which we will learn about next week.

As always this is just a snapshot of what we were up to.  To see more you can click HERE.  If you are viewing this post in your email, be sure to click on Mrs. D.'s real blog to see new upcoming events in January! Also, thank you to everyone who returned their Variety Show Permission Slip for our class act.  We have a lot of fun together and it doesn't have to be perfect, but this is the song we do every morning.  This video was taken a few years ago when Mrs. D. made it for another group of learners in Room 119.  All Room 119 learners know this dance and we start every day doing it.  You can have us watch and practice it by clicking HERE.