May

I cannot believe Monday will be May 2nd.  Wow!  How time flies!  Have a great weekend! 

The Reason I Teach

We have been learning how to write poetry and today was our second time to try on our own to write a poem.  Most of them did pretty good.  Afterwards, at work stations Manyaa and Sloane were creating poems and writing them on the smart board.  They did one about cupcakes and one about dogs.  Things like this really make teaching fun! 

Double Digits With Dice

We practiced place value today with dice and ones and tens blocks.  We worked with a partner rolling the dice and then building the greater number.  For example, if a 6 and a 3 were rolled, their choices are 36 or 63.  With 63 being the greater number they would build it with the tens and ones blocks.  Then they would check each other's work. 

Our First Poem

We have been learning about poetry this week and today we were learning about line breaks.  We practiced adding line breaks to a poem together in large group.  Then we voted on a topic that we could write a shared poem.  They voted to write a poem about Jesus.  They told me their thoughts and phrases about Jesus and we turned it into a poem.    Afterwards, they did the same on their own topics, and then they each wrote their own poems!  It was really exciting!  They are hanging outside our room.  Come take a look! 

Egg Hunt

Don't forget your eggs and baskets tomorrow for the egg hunt!  It should be fun! 

Poetry

Today we started our poetry unit in Writer's Workshop.  We are going to be starting very slowly and not writing any poetry until next week.  I want them to first start thinking and seeing like a poet.  This is a hard concept for most, even me, and I want them to feel success and not get discouraged.  We started today by looking at some ordinary objects, we wore our special poet's glasses, and tried to write about what we saw. 

I am sending home special poetry homework as well.  Don't worry, it's easy!



Writing Celebration

We celebrated the end of our Authors as Mentors unit in Writer's Workshop today.  We had the Puppy Pals Pre K class come visit and we shared our books with them.  It is amazing to think we started out the year barely writing, and now we are AUTHORS!!  It is so exciting!  We will start poetry on Monday.