It's a New Year with the Pirates of Nice
by Ben Hollister
February 02, 2010
Brrrr... what a cold month! Despite it being freezing, that hasn't stopped us from blazing a trail through January. We have had lots of fun learning about all new topics, reading new stories, and discovering all the important dates and histories in the month. Here are just a few of the amazing concepts we have learned...
Reading has been exciting with all sorts of fun skills like compare/contrast in stories, learning about beginning and end clusters in words, contractions, naming words, sentence structure, sight words, and great new stories. We were able to find some new witchy and monster fingers so we can all use them while reading together!
Spelling has increased our knowledge of long vowel words, our speed at Sparkle, and our handwriting. We are now also including two challenge words each week to help boost our vocabulary.
Math has been incredibly fun with patterns, number lines, doubles, skip counting, odds and evens, ordinal place numbers, new math games, and Around the World. The pirates continued learning about greater than and less than, which was made even easier by using a real crocodile head!
The crocodile always eats the biggest number. We have made a few new class books and activities too!
Science included a huge lesson on animals. We learned all about animals and their various habitats, adaptations, camouflage, and life cycles. The students loved learning about the food chain as well and making a few mobiles.
Other fun units we have learned about this month were on Martin Luther King Jr and why he is important, as well as the unit we are still in, penguin! The pirates really enjoy learning all about penguins, their environments, diet, types, and making all sorts of cool penguin art projects. We even made a fact book! Look for all these crafty items coming home soon! The pirates also made it to the 100th Day of school! We celebrated the momentous occasion with lots of activities, stories, a special 100th Day Show and Tell, and our Pirate Party.
What's on the horizon...
Groundhog Day predictions and lore, Jump Rope for Heart, Valentine's Day and much, much more!
