Presidents, One Hundredth Day, and Hearts

Last week flew by with lots of anticipation and excitement for the 100th day of school and Valentine's Day.  We also paid our respects to two very important men, named George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in honor to the upcoming Presidents' Day.  (The kiddos affectionately nicknamed them "George" and "Abe" which was so cute!)

Happy 100th Day!

We read books about the lives of our first and sixteenth presidents and then reviewed the facts learned.  Each student then chose their favorite facts to write down.  When finished they created some very cute "George" and "Abe" caricatures to display on our bulletin boards.

We also enjoyed our first "Brown Bag Book Club" event in a long time!  The book we focused on was based on a true story about a little girl who wrote to President Lincoln encouraging him to grow a beard titled "Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers" by Karen Winnick.

We used a story sequence on the bags to guide our discussion.

Happy 100th Day of School!

To begin the day everyone made crowns and enjoyed a special treat!

The boys and girls enjoyed many different activities to celebrate being "100 days smarter!" The pictures below are of just a few of the many things we did to celebrate.  

Everyone drew a picture of what they thought they would look like at 100 years of age.

 

One of the favorite activities in our class is called "Making Words."  The letters in a special word are used to create as many new words as possible.  This time we used the words "one hundred" of course! The most made by a team was 20 words in 20 minutes!  Congratulations! Here are some pictures of the teams in hard at work:

We also played a game on the interactive white board in which students had to find specific numbers on a one hundred chart in less than a minute.  This proved to be very intense and exciting!

As a homework assignment, students were asked to bring in a collection of 100 items of their choice.  They wrote about their collections, displayed them, and then told about them to the class as if they were a tour guide in a museum.  Everyone enjoyed the "tour" very much as you can tell by the applause pictured below.

Here are a few of the collections:

 Students displayed their collections by putting them in sets of five or ten.

We ended the week with our Valentine's party and lots of sugar!

Happy Valentine's Day!  Happy 100th Day! Happy President's Day!

Snow and Cold Weather Fun!

During the month of January we had many days off from school, but that didn't stop us from making the most of the time when we were together.  We did lots of learning about how snowflakes are formed and learned about states of matter while studying the life cycle of a snowman.  We also practiced looking for, identifying, and using non-fiction text features.  Action verbs and transition words were also incorporated into our writing.

After reading "Sneezy the Snowman" who is constantly trying to get warm, we described how we like to get warm during cold winter days and made some cute snowman faces to help display the writing.

Below are some great "action" pictures with descriptions:

As a follow-up to our study of how snowflakes are formed (see the previous blog), we dove into learning about "states of matter" and used science vocabulary to explain to a melting snowman why he/she shouldn't be sad.  We actually watched a "mini" snowman melt right in our classroom! Once it was in liquid form I heated it up and we watched the "snowman" turn into a gas and vaporize into the air of our classroom.  The boys and girls were amazed that they were breathing in their snowman!

Next, we completed a booklet to review the vocabulary.

 Here are some pictures of our melting snowman:

 Then, everyone completed the following "life cycle" activity:

Last month, some of our readers worked on writing about various processes they chose to read about.  They designed a "flow chart" to describe their topic, practiced what they were going to say to a peer, and then, presented their project to all of their classmates.

 

In math we have been learning a variety of addition strategies.  The boys and girls always enjoy practicing by playing math games with their friends!  Here some of the games:

Next, we will be learning about President Lincoln and President Washington, Washington, D.C., the White House, President and Mrs. Obama.  Of course, there will be a Valentine's Day party on Friday!  Until next time!!