Literacy Centers

Our Literacy Centers are going well! We always have a Reading center where children read books that relate to the unit we are working on, or read poems and charts around the room that we have worked on during instructional time.

We also have a Writing Center that we go to every day. Words to go along with the season are posted on the wall for the children to use. 

The other two centers in the room are centered around skills we are working on like beginning sounds, rhyming, color words, syllables, or even making words.

The last center is working with me on reading skills at their instructional level. Some children are reading so we have a reading lesson while others are working on letters and sounds to begin reading. The children spend about 15 minutess at each center and then they rotate to the next center.

50th Day of School

We had such fun on the 50th day of school! After we finished our 50th day journal pages we made a snack of 50 items. We made sets of 10 using 5 different snacks.

The children enjoyed eating the snack when they were finished sorting into sets of 10. We practiced counting by 10 and made a necklace with 50 beads on it.

We can't wait until 100 day!

Field Trip to Stillwater Prairie

We started the day with our Halloween Parade! Here are Mrs. Busse's Characters!

Then we got ready for our field trip to Stillwater Prairie. We learned a lot about trees.

Photo slideshow generated with Smilebox

When we returned to school we had a Halloween Party! Wow what a busy day!
Check back tomorrow to see what we dressed as for Halloween and what neat book we made about our Halloween costume.

A Big Surprise!!

I went to the site DonorsChoose     http://www.donorschoose.org/teachers                                                                                                  and wrote up a project to be funed. I was super surprised when I looked last week and noticed that some wonderful people funded my project! The children are super excited to see what is in the boxes that were delivered today.

Hopefully it will be assembled tomorrow and I will have more pictures. I can't wait to write another project!

Working at the Smartboard & More

Well it has been a while and I am sorry. My goal is to post something at least 3 times a week. We get so busy I forget to take pictures and then do not post anything.
The first thing I want to post about today is the wonderful job the children are doing on the Smartboard during calendar time I use the calendar developed by http://www.jmeacham.com/calendar/calendar.smart.board.htm  
below are some pictures of the children manipulating the things on the Smartboard to complete the calendar.

The children have been busy at centers counting creepy crawly things! They have had fun using Halloween items to count, compare numbers, and add on as well as subtract.

During literacy centers in the morning the children are practicing beginning sounds by matching fall item.

And Halloween puzzles are always fun!

And our center rotations would not be complete with out some Halloween writing!

October Must Read!

This is my MUST READ IN OCTOBER BOOK! I have read this every year for the last 15 years and I never get tired of it. The kids love it too. We act it out, sing it, listen to it over and over, and talk about it. I think that the children love the idea that the smallest creature had the biggest idea and it worked. It also teaches that working together is the best practice.
Join the fun and share your October must read or go to www.learningwithmrsparker.blogspot.com
to find a lot of other great October books.

We are working on our apple unit! This is a song we sing each morning to the tune of BINGO. It goes:
There is a fruit I love to eat and apple is it's name oh
A  P  P  L  E
A  P  P  L E
A  P  P  L  E
and apple is it's name oh.

Then the first person turns the card around so that is says crunch so the next refrain is
crunch P P L E

and so on until it is
crunch  crunch  crunch  crunch  crunch

The kids love to sing this song.

We read the poem below using the voices that characterize the emotions in the poem and then we read it using silly voice like a monster or cheerleader. We will read it like we are underwater (by patting our hand over our mouth while we read it) or like we are on top of a mountain echoing. We will read it really fast and then really slow.

                                 Poem borrowed from http://www.jmeacham.com/index.htm

I was so surprised when we tasted our apples and most of the children liked the green apples! So today we had green apples with caramel dip. Yummy!