Thank you to all of the moms who came to our circus this afternoon! The kiddos have worked so hard to prepare for this day, and I know they were proud to share it with you! I hope you had a chance to stop by the room and see all of the great things the students did this week. We’ve been busy, busy, busy!
In preparation for our own circus, we spent this week learning about the circus. Since many of the kiddos haven’t been to a circus, we watched a few videos to see what a real circus looks like. It was fun to watch their reactions to the different acts. We read many stories, both fiction and nonfiction, about the circus to help build our understanding as well. On Wednesday, we wrote about what we would like to do if we were in the circus. I love how many aspiring acrobats we have in our class! We made clown faces for our bulletin board, and we worked together to create the giant clowns to decorate the gym for this afternoon.
We also spent some time getting our classroom ready for you, the moms! We wrote about our moms in a couple of ways. First, we wrote a small biography of our moms. Some of your ages are quite funny. One student thought his mom was 92 years old! We wrote about why our moms are special. The students gave me all kinds of answers from “She makes yummy food” to “She works at a college” to “She loves me.” Since Mother’s Day is typically all about the flowers, we made paper tulips for the hallway, and we did a still life painting of some real flowers I brought in. We also made a Mother’s Day quilt runner. The students drew a picture of something they like to do with their moms on one square and created a colorful pattern on another.
In Jolly Phonics this week, we reviewed the sounds “oi” and “oy.” These sounds seem to be really easy for the kiddos. They can apply this knowledge when they are reading very easily. Our tricky words were also, of, and eight. I have been challenging the children to try to write these words correctly now. This is a huge task for some of the children, but I am seeing some definite growth in their ability to write words conventionally (correctly).
In math, we played a fun game called Number Gymnastics. In this game, a student chose a number to be our gymnast. This gymnast did all kinds of tricks (twist to reverse the numbers, swing forward, swing backward, etc.) to change to a new number. Then the rest of the students had to figure out what number the gymnast was now. The students really got in to this game and I look forward to playing again in the future. We also played around with something called a Function Machine. This “machine” follows a rule (e.g. add 1, subtract 2, etc.) to change whatever number put into the machine into a new number. For example, if we put 5 in the machine and the rule was to add 2, 7 would come out of the machine. This was a great way for the students to practice basic addition and subtraction.
Thank you again for attending our circus! I hope you enjoyed the experience!
Have a great weekend! Happy Mother’s Day!
Mrs. Hansen
In preparation for our own circus, we spent this week learning about the circus. Since many of the kiddos haven’t been to a circus, we watched a few videos to see what a real circus looks like. It was fun to watch their reactions to the different acts. We read many stories, both fiction and nonfiction, about the circus to help build our understanding as well. On Wednesday, we wrote about what we would like to do if we were in the circus. I love how many aspiring acrobats we have in our class! We made clown faces for our bulletin board, and we worked together to create the giant clowns to decorate the gym for this afternoon.
We also spent some time getting our classroom ready for you, the moms! We wrote about our moms in a couple of ways. First, we wrote a small biography of our moms. Some of your ages are quite funny. One student thought his mom was 92 years old! We wrote about why our moms are special. The students gave me all kinds of answers from “She makes yummy food” to “She works at a college” to “She loves me.” Since Mother’s Day is typically all about the flowers, we made paper tulips for the hallway, and we did a still life painting of some real flowers I brought in. We also made a Mother’s Day quilt runner. The students drew a picture of something they like to do with their moms on one square and created a colorful pattern on another.
In Jolly Phonics this week, we reviewed the sounds “oi” and “oy.” These sounds seem to be really easy for the kiddos. They can apply this knowledge when they are reading very easily. Our tricky words were also, of, and eight. I have been challenging the children to try to write these words correctly now. This is a huge task for some of the children, but I am seeing some definite growth in their ability to write words conventionally (correctly).
In math, we played a fun game called Number Gymnastics. In this game, a student chose a number to be our gymnast. This gymnast did all kinds of tricks (twist to reverse the numbers, swing forward, swing backward, etc.) to change to a new number. Then the rest of the students had to figure out what number the gymnast was now. The students really got in to this game and I look forward to playing again in the future. We also played around with something called a Function Machine. This “machine” follows a rule (e.g. add 1, subtract 2, etc.) to change whatever number put into the machine into a new number. For example, if we put 5 in the machine and the rule was to add 2, 7 would come out of the machine. This was a great way for the students to practice basic addition and subtraction.
Thank you again for attending our circus! I hope you enjoyed the experience!
Have a great weekend! Happy Mother’s Day!
Mrs. Hansen