April

Wow, it's been quite a while since I have posted! This cold has certainly gotten the best of me in the last few weeks. It has been great to meet with everyone at conferences and share the wonderful progress your children have made this year. I really feel lucky with this great group of kids.
A few updates with some things we are learning about..

In writer's workshop we have begun a new unit of "How-To" Writing. Children are thinking of things they know how to do really well and then teaching someone else how to do it in the form of a book. For many children it is a nice change from narrative story telling to a more concrete, step by step, procedure. Children are recording many sounds in the words they are writing and adding more and more to their sentences! We are continuing to work on leaving spaces and being neat so we can go back and read our own writing!

In reading children are practicing picking out "just right" books in the classroom that they can read by themselves, and building stamina for independent reading time. We are using our Fundations time to practice building fluency around tapping out/blending CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words (sun, mop, get, pig) to help us in both reading and writing, as well as continuing to build our sight words (words you can't tap out, you just know when you see them like the, and, is, etc). We have been reading The Boxcar Children chapter book each day at quiet time and it has been a big hit! Many children are even choosing to write their own chapters during choice time. 

In math we have been continuing to build our number sense while also learning about shapes. We have begun looking at 3-dimensional shapes and doing a great deal of compare/contrast around different types of 3-D shapes, and comparing different 2-D and 3-D shapes.

We recently finished up our weather and maple sugaring lessons and will spend a majority of the end of the year looking at plant and animal life cycles, and tying that into our Forest Friday afternoons as the weather  gets nicer!