Touch it!

Touch it learning is fun! Our Fundations lessons are lots of fun!

We have been working on word play and forming sentences with the resources we have available on the Touch it board.  The boys and girls love taking turns at the board.  It is fun to move the words around to create sentences. 

Happy New Year!

Friends in Room 101 returned from break ready to work!  We dove right back in and began our study of fish and sea life!  During the last two weeks we have discussed and discovered quite a bit about hermit crabs, sea anenomes, whales, sand dollars and more!  We have sorted and counted play fish and creatures and have been working hard at creating a new book with art much like Eric Carl. In ELA we have begun working on our capital letters and are creating a dictionary.    This week we have spent a lot of time measuring with popsicle sticks, cubes and other tools. 

Have a wonderful break!

Mrs. Parnell and Mrs. Hoyt wish everyone a wonderful break and a Happy New Year!  Be sure to write in your new journals!  Let us know about what you do during your time away from school.  We will be looking forward to getting back to work and learning about creatures in the ocean in January!

Polor Express Day!

What a wonderful time we had celebrating our Polar Express Day!  Clad in our pjs, we visited the library with our stuffed, fury friends, for a special reading of The Polar Express.  Then back to Room 101 we went for a wide variety of fun activities.  We re-created an image of the Polar Express train with ink and stamps, frosted holiday trees, played the dreidel game, made festive frames, and more!  Our afternoon was topped of with a special viewing of the movie version of our theme for the day!

We put the FUN in Fundations!

We sure put the FUN in fundations today!  Actually it was our lesson on the new Touch IT  board that was installed in our classroom!  What a fun time we had this morning practicing our letter recognition and letter sound connections!  We are very impressed by how well everyone did with both the letters and the board!

We have been reading and working with various editions of stories as well.  We have read and discussed various editions of The Nutcracker.  Mrs. Parnell is even teaching us some of the dances.  If you have The Nutcracker music at home, play it for your children.    We are also exploring the story The Polar Express.  Tomorrow will be our Polar Express Day!  Mr. Lyons will be reading to us in our PJs.  This afternoon we hope to start our comparison by previewing some of the Polar Express movie on our new Touch IT board.

The board is sure to be a new and exciting addition to our classroom!

We learned about Electricity, Electricity!

Mrs. Parnell shared an enlightening lesson about electricity this morning!  Thanks to hands on resources from the Science Center we were able to test various items to see if they are conductors or non-conductors.  Then we created electrical circuits!  We created light and sound.  Be sure to check with your child and ask him/her about the fun we had today.

Math Time in Room 101

Math is done in the afternoon in room 101.  We use many approaches to our lessons.  Small and whole group, lots of manipulatives and discussions.  A favorite of the kindergarteners is time on the computers and ipads.  One of our favorite current math activities is called break the trains.  Students create a "train" of connecting cubes that is made up of repeating patterns  "the cars".  After the train is created (using about a dozen cubes), students must record the train on paper and then segment, or break the train, into cars.  It is pretty challenging.  Try it at home.  You could use colored cereals, different coins, or even Lego pieces to create trains.