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=March is National Reading Month http://shareastory-shapeafuture.blogspot.com/ =

February Highlights, so far ...
We are halfway through February as I write this entry and wonder where the time went! In Math, addition and subtraction up to 18 is part of our daily large group activity along with the math objectives of greater than, less than, odd and even numbers. We are gearing up for our 100th day celebration on Thursday, February 19. The whole day is dedicated to our 100th day celebration, we are very excited! We have been reading up a storm, daily! We are reading everything, from mini Love word books to the newspaper, to short chapter books like Frog and Toad and wordless text. We are blending sounds, forming words and decoding the unknown or unfamiliar! This is a a very exciting time in our room! Look for a Reading Strategy cue card to be sent home in the next several weeks. We finished our unit on Magnets in science and learned that magnets are attracted to items made out of "NIC," nickel, iron, cobalt. We made a lot of wonderful magnetic discoveries. We have begun our new science unit, The Five Senses. We are still in the preparatory stage, also known as the introduction stage. The first sense of study will be "Seeing." We have many cool experiments to try, it should be an exciting and fun unit! In social studies, we have completed our unit on maps, at least formally, (we are always creating maps in some form) and moving on to Community Helpers. We will begin this unit with an informal look at our learning community (our classroom) to our home community and then on to our village. We will discuss, create and discover what makes a community, who participates in our community and why each community members participation plays such a vital role in our safety, success, and over all well-being. Not only are we emergent readers, we have become emergent writers as well! We have created our own mini books with illustrations and we are presently scanning and downloading a book we wrote and illustrated titled, All About Bears. This book was our culmination project for our B week study of bears. We will let you know when our bear book is posted, ready for reading and sharing. Look for a note in our B.E.E. binder. Thank you to all the moms, dads, grandparents and caregivers that took time to be part of our Valentine Party! We had a wonderful time! The photos taken during Moms, Muffins, Mittens and Me! have been posted. Also the photos from Dads, Dinosaurs, Donuts and Me ! are posted, take a look!

** January 5 - 9th:  ** Our first week back was smooth! We fell back into our routine quite nicely, sharing adventures, books and presents! The Saxon letter and sound of the week was /Ss/, our math objectives were; odd/even, greater than and less than and the polishing our beginning addition skills to 12. We began our formal Writer's Workshop with a descriptive narrative about a snowman and we were formally introduced to nouns. Our **Love ** word list grew to 30 words for the month and we are excited to see so many words we can read in actual storybook print. We are making text to text connections using three wonderful books; //**Somebody and the Three Blairs, Goldilocks and the Three Martians, plus**// //**Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians**//. We mixed science and art this week and came up with a "concoction" that allowed us to create 2-dimensional snowmen. It is incredible to see what happens when you mix shaving cream and Elmer's Glue together. Thank you to our Celebrity Readers and Center Helpers for the week. Also a HUGE THANK YOU! to all of the wonderful parents that helped in planning, creating and executing our Fabulous Holiday Party! Please remember our Home-Connection **Snowman** **Project** is due on Monday, January 12. Also please remember to pack your child a snack each day. My classroom supply has run very low and all I have to offer right now are saltine crackers ( not a huge favorite). No child will go hungry but a little something goes a long way! Please remember to read nightly.

December 15-18:
Wow, talk about a whirlwind of learning and doing, this week has been non-stop! We started off our week with reviewing our Mm and Ii sounds, had snowball fights with words, took a ride on the Polar Express and participated in two dress rehearsals for our Winter Sing. **Ms. LaMar and Mrs. K. are working with us on our [|Schema2.pdf], making connections while reading and conferencing with us during our independent reading time. Mr. and Mrs. Carsuello, our celebrity readers, read to us two great books on Thursday. Their selections helped give us schema about the snow fall the meteorologists are predicting. Have you ever wondered what snowman do at night? We know! Mrs. Carsuello read the story by Caralyn Buehner, **__Snowmen at Night__** and now we know! We have learned 16 **Love**  **words**. We are using the website //Spellingcity.com // to help practice reading, spelling, and identifying our **Love words ** in and out of text. The Winter Sing was great fun! We loved singing to an audience! We have been practicing with Mrs. Lehur, our music teacher for a long time! She was very proud of our performance! Have a Happy Holiday, a Happy New Year and see you on Monday, January 5th, 2009!
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 * Blogged by Mrs. K., Sarah A., Jackson, Tyler and Patrick**



December 12:
We are completing our thematic unit on Magnets, Maps, Mittens and Measurements. We learned so much about magnets. Take a look at this link [|Magnet Facts.pdf] cited about magnets and some great class pictures. Using our comprehensive literacy skills we have worked on schema during our large group and independent reading time. We are learning how to make connections from self to text and text to text as we read books such as the **__The Mystery of the Missing Mitten__** by Stephen Kellogg, **__The Mitten Tree__** by Candance Christiansen, and our all time favorite, **__The Mitten__** by Jan Brett. In January, our author study will focus on Jan Brett and her many wonderful picture books. We can't wait to read several of her picture books such as **__The Hat__**, **__Hedgie's Surprise__**, and **__Annie and the Wild Animals__** just to name a few**.** Our Social Studies unit has introduced us to the world of maps! We read a wonderful picture book written by a six year old girl names Sara. With the help of her dad, Sara taught us all about maps; silly maps like the map of her bedroom, her heart, her tummy and of course her neighborhood. We are making our very own map book, using detail and labeling each page.
 * Blogged by Mrs. K., Fiona, Taylor, and Kira.**

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