Sea Creatures!

A little snow fun at recess this week!








This week we began started our first science unit about sea creatures!  We began by brainstorming what we know about sea creatures and their habitat.  I found out that our class already knows a lot about some interesting sea creatures!  We then read Sea Life and Commotion in the Ocean to start familiarizing ourselves with more sea creatures.  We also read about an ocean and sea creature expert, Jacques Cousteau, and his love of the underwater world in a book called  Manfish.  We all got a new early reader for our book boxes about sea creatures and we learned two new sight words: can and of.  On Thursday, each child chose a sea creature to learn more about and become an "expert"!  In your child's Friday Folder is a note to you about an at-home project to complete with your child about his or her sea creature.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

During Reader's Workshop, we read a new Scholastic Let's Find Out Magazine.  This week's magazine helped us understand the difference between fiction and nonfiction text by comparing the story of The Mitten by Jan Brett to how animals really stay warm in winter.  In the book, all the animals squeeze into a mitten to say warm.  Our magazine shared information about how those same animals actually stay warm in winter...heavier fur, digging underground, or more feathers.  We also explored the difference between fiction and nonfiction by reading a National Geographic easy reader about sharks and comparing that to a fiction story called Misunderstood Shark.  We found that many nonfiction books have photographs and labels and that many fiction stories have animals that can talk and have drawn illustrations.  Be sure to ask your child if he or she can tell you the difference between fiction and nonfiction!

We enjoyed reading The Mitten so much that each child got an easy reader pattern book of the story for their book box.  We also acted out the story several times in the classroom as we practiced retelling the story.  There are some picture cards in your child's Friday Folder of the characters in the story if you and your child want to practice retelling this fun story at home!

In math, our focus has been on money this week!  We learned the names and worth of two coins: penny and nickel. We spent a bit of time making observations about the coins and then used them to play three games:  Which Coin Will Win?, Money March, and Beat You to 15 cents.  In these games, the children practiced recognizing coins, adding up coins, and trading pennies in for nickels.  See if your child can identify coins at home and tell you how much they are worth! A few friends even learned a new math game called Skip-Bo (the game in the pictures)!  A fun game to play with your family!

During Fundations, we are beginning to build small words and are tapping out the sounds of those words and then blending them together.  We also are working on identifying the final sounds in words.  Both of these skills are helping us in our "best guess" spelling! We have also begun a quick review of uppercase letter formation.  This week we practiced uppercase A, B, C, and D.

Lastly, during our Read Aloud time after lunch I have begun reading from chapter books this month.  One child's family introduced us to a series of books and read one of them this week. The series is called Zoey and Sassafras.  The book we read was called Dragons and Marshmallows.  The children LOVED this book and it has some great science vocabulary incorporated parts of the scientific method: hypothesis, observations, and conclusions.  Just thoughts I would share this with you if you are looking for some new read alouds at home.  It might be a good reading weekend (or skiing!) seeing that we are getting more snow!  Happy Weekend!