Mittens & Things

Wow, I can't believe we're almost halfway through the year! It's been so nice this week to see everyone's bright and well-rested faces. :) This week was all about winter (although more of the fun snowy kind, less of the Texas rainy kind).

We started off by reading The Mitten by Jan Brett. As the kids know, she is one of my all-time favorite authors! She also illustrates all of her stories and is just all-around amazing! We talked about genres and how this is a folktale so she is just retelling the story to us in her own way. They loved it. Of course I forgot to take a picture of our finished projects because I'm so out of habit of photographing everything! Here's what the animals looked like.

We also read The Hat by Jan Brett which is another folktale. Then we used a Double Bubble to talk about the similarities and differences in the books. The kids made a ton of great connections to the other texts we've been reading as well as to themselves.

Our class wrote about their winter breaks and created some adorable little people to go with their writing. We sat in a circle and all shared our favorite things first. It was wonderful hearing how much people love their families and friends. Of course we all got to talk about our new fun  presents, too! :) Gotta love the honesty that comes from a 6 year old!

We also did a writing activity after reading The Jacket I Wear in the Snow. After reading the story we talked about all the wonderful adjectives we had read. We reviewed how adjectives make stories more exciting, and life is pretty boring without them! The kids colored a person, then wrote about what he was wearing using wonderful descriptive adjectives.

This week we created mittens to play a mitten concentration game. We rolled dice to create math facts on one mitten then we put its answer on the other mitten. The kids played concentration to make pairs.

In Social Studies this week we've been reviewing rules. It was a long two weeks away from school, but I'm glad to report that most everyone has remembered proper school etiquette! With the new ClassDojo in place, I think we're all excited to gain tons of points throughout the day. We've realized it's even better than the color chart because you can keep adding and adding and adding! I split the kids up into groups to brainstorm the different rules we have for different parts of the school. Then we made a giant Tree Map with all of their rules. They worked great with their teams!

ClassDojo has been awesome. I absolutely love it, and I think the kids do too! Like I've said, there is no limit for how many points they can get so I think that it's even better than the color chart. The kids can hear the sound on the computer and see what people are getting points for and why points are being lost. Any feedback from you is appreciated, too. I've gotten some good comments from a couple parents already! Here's our weekly breakdown. We had a great percentage. I'm one happy teacher!

All in all, it was a wonderful week back! I did miss the firsties, but boy am I exhausted! Stay tuned for the exciting things next week. It's one of my favorite things we do all year! :)