The Mayflower

We have learned a lot about the Mayflower and the very start of the Thanksgiving tradition. After researching the ship and taking a virtual tour of the ship, we sketched our own Mayflower pictures. We used cray-pas and crayons to bring them to life and are so proud of our drawings! We learned about the Mayflower's journey across the ocean and packed our own "suitcases" with five things we would bring if we had to take the same journey!

We also made storytelling bracelets, each bead represents a part of the story of the first feast with the Pilgrims and Native Americans. 

Number Combinations

Our math focus this week was on visualizing and retelling the action in addition story problems. We worked a lot on finding the total of two numbers in a story problem by using one of our addition strategies; Counting All, Counting Some or a Known Strategy, such as using known number combinations. We made paper number chains that show all of the combinations of 10. We also played games that encouraged using the Counting On strategy.

Literacy

We have moved on from writing Small Moment stories to Fiction. Fiction is a perfect genre for young children because they are so great at pretending! Our focus has been developing the character(s) in our stories- the character that we imagine; giving the character a name, imagining a place for our character and adventures our character has in our story.

During our reading time, our focus is on sequencing events in the order they occurred in a story- retelling a story accurately. After reading The Greedy Python, children practiced their retell skills through pictures.

Where the Wild Things Are

We made Wild Things and wrote about them after reading "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak. They look awesome hanging up in our hallway- come by and take a look!

Magnets

During our theme time, children have been exploring magnetism! We are using the process of inquiry to predict, plan, record, experiment and reflect on our scientific observations. Children asked questions about magnets and experimented with water, paper and plastic. Today, we made "magnet art", using magnets to create colorful paintings!

Making Shapes

Mrs. Magida's class and our class worked together creating perfect triangle pictures during a special math time with Mrs. Abele-Austin, our math coordinator and our librarian Mrs. Daigle. After reading a story called "The Perfect Square", children snipped, punched and colored to create pictures out of their "perfect triangle"!

In our second math unit, students are exploring shapes in a variety of ways.  Children are working on composing and decomposing 2-D shapes and focusing on making shapes from smaller shapes.  They are also learning to describe, sort and classify shapes, distinguishing the attributes of different shapes.

The Pumpkin Patch

We had so much fun at Grenier's farm!  Mr. Grenier  brought us out into his pumpkin fields where we saw a variety of pumpkins, large and small, some eaten by animals like deer or raccoon and we were able to pick out a small pumpkin to bring home. We were also invited to walk through his corn filed, which was like a giant maze of cornstalks! The Grenier's gave us giant cookies and delicious cider. A big thank you for a wonderful afternoon at the farm!