Thank you for 2013.. Bring on 2014!

I can not believe that we are halfway through the year! Thank goodness I get these little darlings for a second year. One is just not enough.
I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for supporting me and your child on our academic adventure. We can not do it without you! You play such a vital role in the success of your child.
Thank you for all the donations to our class, for helping your child read and study, and for communicating with me about your child and his/her needs.
I am so excited for 2014! My brain keeps thinking about all the fun we will have after break.

Top 10 Reasons I am excited for 2014!
10. Science bags will start to come home
9. I will begin to invite parent volunteers to help out in our room.
8. We will be hatching duck eggs.
7. Laura Ladybug is coming back!
6. We will try the Tickleme plants again. (No luck the first time.)
5. Field trips!
4. Fun science units with some awesome experiments.
3. The Bears will win the Super Bowl. Okay I had to get that in there...wishful thinking.
2. Minute to Win It assemble after break.
1. Watching each child develop, learn, and grow!

Wonderful Wednesday

The Gingerbread Man

Yesterday we read the story, Gingerbread Man, Loose in the School.

After reading the story, we made our own Gingerbread Man.

Today when we came into the classroom, our Gingerbread Man was gone and left us a note!

This is the note the Gingerbread Man left us.

We decided to make missing posters and hang them up around the school so we could find our missing Gingerbread Man!

While making our posters, we found another note from the Gingerbread Man. Inside this letter was a clue that told us that our Gingerbread Man was in the gym.  We decided that we were going to have to go and look for him!

Super excited to find our Gingerbread Man!

Clue 3, led us to the nurses office.

Clue 5, led us to the office.

Clue 6, led us to the cafeteria, where we found a letter with our Gingerbread Man and a plate of gingerbread cookies. 

We love cookies!

Yummy yummy cookies!

Laura Ladybug!

Today Laura Ladybug came to our room to help us with our addition story problems.  How could a ladybug help us with math you ask?   Well, Laura Ladybugs spots can come off and back on again.  She would use her spots to show us how to solve the problem. 

She brought with her some ladybug mats that we used to solve the problems with her.

We liked when Laura Ladybug came to visit.  It is amazing how much she looked and sounded like Mrs. Wanke.

T-shirts

Looking sooo cute in our Wonderful Whale T-shirts!

We will be wearing our shirts tomorrow at school. They will come home tomorrow!

Power Towers

Did you know that we are building cup towers that help us with our math facts?  Well it is true and we LOVE it!  Mrs. Wanke taught us a game called Power Towers.

First we read the fact on the side of the cup.

 Then, we say the answer check to see if we are right.

Lastly, if we are right we stack it.

 

We continue this until we have the whole tower built.  Eventually, Mrs. Wanke is going to time us to see if we can build the tower before the timer goes off. 

Mrs. Wanke has all kinds of different Power Towers.  Some Power Towers focus on +1, +2, doubles, and doubles +1 facts.  We think they are all fun!

Welcome Back!

We had a little bit of SNOW and some Pumpkin Jack to start our Monday off!

Today we played in the "SNOW!"  Mrs. Wanke gave us some story problems to solve and we had to write our thinking in the "snow."  Check out our pictures...we had SNOW much fun!

 

Later in the day we decided to check on Pumpkin Jack!

 

Mrs. Wanke opened the container!  Can you believe it? Can you say stinky and gross?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winner winner TURKEY dinner!

Well...I just have to say that I have been blessed with an amazing group of students for the next two years. What did I do to deserve that? Whatever it is I am very thankful for each and every one of my students and their parents. So needless to say I am the winner! (Winner winner TURKEY dinner...that's me!)  Happy Thanksgiving!

Now that I am done being sappy...
We had so much fun today out at the ICF property! Check out some of our pictures. If you have more, please email them to me.

 

Eating Snack the Wampanoag Way

Today we learned that Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to plant their crops. He showed the Pilgrims that if they planted a dead fish with their seeds their crops would grow better. 

Our snack today we planted corn the Wampanoag way. We crushed up Oreo's for our dirt, threw in a few candy corns, for the seeds, and added a Swedish Fish to help the crop grow nice and big.  Our favorite part was eating our delicious harvest!

Scarves That Warm Our Hearts!

Today we had a discussion about needs and wants.  We talked about what we WANT for Christmas.  Then we discussed things that we NEED.  Right now we need warm clothes to keep us warm outside.  We imagined what it would be like to be outside without anything to keep us warm.  We thought about the boys and girls in the towns that were hit by tornadoes. We decided that one way we could help them would be to give them a warm scarf to keep them warm this winter season.

Working hard to make scarves. Our little fingers are perfect for this job! 

 

 

Check out the finished products...