What's the Weather?

We continued with our weather unit this week by brainstorming weather words and then describing what those words might look like.  We found many of these words in a new weather emergent reader book.  The children did a careful job coloring in the pictures and circling the sight words.  We also have a new sight word this week: are! 

During Morning Meeting each day, we have been observing the weather and deciding if it is a "lion" day (cold or stormy weather) or if it is a "lamb" day (sunny or calm weather).  Now we are also observing the type of weather: sunny, rainy, snowy, windy, or cloudy. Together we are creating a picto-graph of weather in March and April.  The children also started their own weather journal.  A few days each week, we will write observations about the weather and record the temperature.  We also had a Scholastic News magazine about rainbows.  We learned how rainbows formed and where you may see them.  Can your child tell you?  After reading about rainbows, the children each made their own rainbow for the classroom and added a fact about rainbows.  What was your child's fact?

During Writer's Workshop, the children continue working on their opinion writing. This week I reminded them that they have all the strategies they need to spell words on their own and use best guess spelling.  They do not have ask adults!  We brainstormed all the strategies we could use...encourage your child to use the following strategies when writing at home:

• Use your sound power by stretching out and tapping out sounds
• Look around the room for familiar words
• Use the word wall for sight words

I am so impressed with their writing!  So many children are writing opinion pieces with an opinion and several reasons.  They are working hard!

In Reader's Workshop, we are continuing to work on using our reading strategies when we get to an unknown word.  I am amazed at the progress the children are making in our reading groups!  You will see more books in your child's Friday Folder this weekend.  Please encourage them to read these books to you multiple times to build up their reading fluency. 

Also during Reader's Workshop, we read another Red Clover Book this week called Crown: Ode to the Fresh Cut.  This was story about how a young boy feels when he goes to the barbershop and gets his fresh, new haircut.  Since we couldn't give ourselves real new haircuts or hairstyles, we did the best next thing:  we drew new hairstyles!  Check out our "fresh cuts" in the picture below!

In math, we did more problem solving this week.  This week's problem was about leprechauns and shamrocks.  If there are 4 leprechauns and they are each holding two shamrocks, how many shamrocks are there all together?  The children did a wonderful job of showing their math thinking in pictures and numbers. Not only did they label their drawings with numbers, they wrote addition equations to represent their thinking.  Even a few brave Kindergarteners came up and shared their math thinking in front of the class! We also learned two games that focused on addition:  Make it Five and Roll, Add, and Compare.

Have a great weekend!  Let's hope for some real spring weather soon...but while winter seems to still be here, please continue to send your child with snow pants, hats, gloves, and boots.  Thank you!