Feely boxes are not for the faint of heart.  This kind of slimy orange cauliflower sure felt like brains behind the curtain!

​We're coming home with some sweet Halloween decorated canvas bags.  They will be great for the grocery store or Trick or Treating!

​You may also see some festive
Halloween necklaces!  We practiced our fine motor skills with these beaded beauties!

Look at all that math.  First we had to figure out how many kids would go in each group if we needed three groups.  Well, 18/3=6.  Then we needed to figure out those crazy measuring fractions.  All we had were cups, 1/4 cups, teaspoons, and 1/4 teaspoons.  When you draw a picture it's easy to see that two quarters makes 1/2 and three quarters makes 3/4.  We're such quick thinkers!

Word Work
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We study a different phonics pattern each week.  Then we each use words based on our reading level and look for patterns, learn about them, and make sure we can recognize them in text and use them in writing.  

Vocabulary

Each week we have four new vocabulary words.  We make motions and faces to help remember them and use them in writing and conversation.  Once a week we do Vocabulary Rock and Roll to solidify those words. 

Poetry

Every day we get a new poem.  That means so far we have 42 poems!  We're collecting them in a small binder and read them every morning or during quiet reading time when we want something a little different.

Scholastic News

Scholastic News is a great source of current events, science, and social studies.  We learn about the topic and do some writing.  This week we focused on answering questions with specific evidence from the text.

Reading a Good Book

Once a day, at least, we curl up with a good book.  We've practiced finding "just right books" and then we read lots of them.  We collect them in our books boxes and trade them out in the library so we never get bored.

Research Projects

As you know last week we started our independent research projects.  We're each studying two Colorado animals.  We're doing research online and in books and writing down all of our findings to compare!

Last week we also heard from our very first Reporter of the Week, Boti!  He shared a few articles and a couple of pictures about the great bear problem in town and at the ABC. As the bears food supply starts to disappear under the snow, the bears make their way into town to find our garbage, leftovers, and open house and car doors.  They leave quite a mess so lock your doors people! Thanks Boti :)

We also wrapped up Siri's science experiment about teeth.  Ironically she lost a tooth today!  Take a look and just guess which tooth spent a week in water and which tooth spent a week in soda!?  Pretty gross.  We took the opportunity to discuss enjoying things like soda and candy in moderation...while of course continuing to brush your teeth daily!

And last but not least...we heard from a secret reader.  Mr. Kevin, Beck's dad.  He read a fabulous book, Castaway Cats.  It was a story of disaster, struggle, and finally friendship.  We experience many of the same friendship struggles in our classroom so we could definitely relate.  Though we might not have cat fights, we certainly have to work out our differences with friends.  We're getting really good at it!  Thanks for the great read!!  We love surprise stories from loved ones!

First we experienced Miss Kylie's new favorite book.  She seems to have a new favorite every week!  As we start to dive into non-fiction writing, we'll be writing some How To stories about things we are experts at doing.  For example, playing soccer, tying shoes, reading books, baking bread, and writing stories.  This book, however, uses beautiful illustration to take simple how to tasks to the next level.  For example, how would you see the wind?  How would you make a sandwich?  How would you be brave.  Julie Morstad gives us some pretty clever ideas.

We read this book for the first time today and we're pretty sure it's our new favorite.  Though the story is not necessarily non-fiction, we were able to learn from the fabulous author Julia Denos as she brings the colors in this book to life.  We learned that bringing a non-human element to life is called personification.  The little girl in this book tries to tame all the beautiful colors in the world, but soon realizes that they are much better off free to mix and mingle in the wild where they belong.  We made some awesome connections to our own lives as we read this beautiful, colorful, action packed book.  Check it out at the library!

This is an awesome text we use for small moment stories!  George McClements masterfully takes the terror of eating three peas at dinner time and turns in into some serious drama and a great read.  Have you ever experienced this at your dinner table?  We studied his words and noticed how he uses very specific action words to help the little boy come to life.  He also uses speech bubbles to show what the parents are saying to each other throughout the very dramatic dinner scene.  His character talk and move and this helps them become real for his readers.