Shaving Cream Words

Before the party, we cleaned all of the glue off our tables so we could eat off of them and we practiced writing and spelling our word wall words.

Polar Express Week

This week we had a Polar Express Day. We wore our pajamas to school and Mrs. Oliver read The Polar Express to us in the library. In our classroom, we made a train with our chairs and watched the story of The Polar Express narrated by Lou Diamond Phillips on Storybookonline sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild.Then we drank chocolate milk with whipped cream and sprinkles and ate cookies. Afterward, we brainstormed a list of things the Polar Express train could have seen on the way to the North Pole. Then we made construction paper trains, painted them with white snow, and glued the words to our sentences on in the order.

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We had a class picture taken and Mrs. Yancey made trains for all of us to take home.



We read the New York version of the gingerbread man and made a gingerbread man glyph.
The gingerbread man glyph key:
The buttons = how old you are
The white rick rack = you are a girl
The green rick rack = you are a boy
Red stripes = you like to eat gingerbread cookies
Yellow stripes = you do not like to eat gingerbread cookies
The color of the buttons = your favorite color



We read the book The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett. Then we focused on the story elements of problem and solution. We worked together, at our tables, to make large reindeer.

Calendar Skills

We work on learning to solve story problems during calendar time. We focus on strategies such as acting out, drawing a picture, and looking for a pattern.


We have a clip collection that goes with the number of days in the month. We use our clip collection to work on place value and skip counting.


This month, we added a thermometer to our calendar. Now we keep track of the temperature each day. We compare the temperature to the one from the day before. We also compare the temperature outside to the temperature inside. We discuss how the temperature changes with the season.


Each month, we make a different pattern on our calendar. This month, we are making a positional pattern- right side up and upside down.


We learn about odd and even numbers. Each day we add one cube for the day in the month. We add a blue cube one day then an orange cube the next. We also add them in pairs. We learn that numbers that end in "0", "2", "4", "6", and "8" are even numbers and we learn that when a cube does not have a partner, it is an odd number.


We keep track of the date with money. We add a penny for each day of the month. We trade pennies for nickels, dimes, and quarters. We learn what presidents are on which coins and how much each coin is worth. We sing lots of money songs to help us learn about money.






We sing yesterday, today, and tomorrow songs. Keep with with the days of the week, and record the weather. We look for weather patterns each month that relate to the season.



We learn how to make tally marks. We use "tall soldiers" and "lazy soldiers." We learn that when the date ends in a "0" or "5", we make lazy soldiers and we learn that after every 4 tall soldiers, we need a lazy soldier. After 10 tally marks, we make a gate (draw a circle) to help us see "10." We, also, learn to write the short date so that we will be able to do this in our writing journals.


We keep track of the number of days we have been in school. Each day, we add one straw to our straw collection. This helps us to work on place value. We, also, add a number card to our 100 pocket chart. Each day we look for patterns when we add the next number. We count to 100 with Dr. Jean's Zero the Hero Number Stomp. We, also, count by 2's, 5's, and 10' using Dr. Jean's Macarena Math song.



We are learning to estimate. I use 2 jars to teach students to estimate. One has a set amount of cubes in it. Right now, we are working with the number 10. Then each day, I fill the other jar with a different number of cubes. Students estimate how many cubes they think are in the jar. We talk about why some guesses are good guesses and why some guesses are not.



We, also, use calendar time for Zoophonics and singing our word wall songs. Heidi Butkus has several great sight word Cd's. Her Sing & Spell Cds can be found at http://www.heidisongs.net/.

Blue Day

On Friday, we had "Blue Day" in honor of the letter "B". We brainstormed things that can be blue. We cut apart sentences and put them in order. Then we highlighted word wall words. We read the book Blueberries For Sal and made combinations of 15 using blueberries.

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Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!

This week, we had teddy bear day. We sorted our bears by color, made class books about our bears, and measured how tall our bears were with cubes. We also read lots of bear stories. We read Little Bear's Trousers, discussed the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and made bears and trousers out of scrapbook paper.

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Real Object Graphs

This week, we made graphs using real objects. We talked about how we can collect data using real objects as well as collect data and record it on paper.

We chewed bubble gum and blew bubbles. Then we made a graph to find out how many kids could blow a bubble.



We made a graph to show which Mr. Putter and Tabby story was our favorite. Most kids chose Mr. Putter and Tabby Take the Train, but Mr. Putter and Tabby Pick the Pears, and Mr. Putter and Tabby Walk the Dog were close favorites too.


We graphed who brought their favorite book to school on Monday.

We linked arms in our graph to learn one to one and to learn how to figure how many more.

Bubbles, Bubbles, Everywhere

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Christmas Around the World

We began our study of Christmas celebrations around the world this week. We learned about Christmas celebrations in Mexico, Africa, and Germany. We, also, used holiday cookies for counting and adding.

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