100 Chart Fun...

This hand belongs to Jaxon who was not the only student starting to see the patterns in the 100 chart! Amazing! They just loved the 100 chart puzzles....they just kept playing and playing and playing. I had to stop them for lunch :)

Happy Monday!

Our new bird feeder in honor of Earth Day! I hope the birds will find it before the end of the year :)

We've been working on writing our own story problems. Check these out! They are even writing problems that are harder than what's required for K students!!!!

Today we added a step and actually read our problem to a friend and had him or her try to solve it.

Gabi had a GREAT problem! Check out Ike's below and Kaylee's above :)

Happy Earth Day!

We celebrate Earth Day in a very special way each year. We participate in a classroom book swap! We 'recycle' our old books by turning them into something new for a friend :) :)

I am amazed every year at how many books are sent in!

It was SUPER fun! Thank you so much for participating and helping us to make it a success!!!

Random Updates....

So I thought I lost my camera and then I tried the iPad but I was REALLY bad and REALLY slow at uploading pictures. At the beginning of the year I had to actually start a membership to add more pics to the blog. AGH! Sorry to everyone who really does check this out a lot. I know there are some of you and I appreciate your dedication to what we do everyday......

A GREAT book! Love, love it! We started our very own window garden. Did I post those pictures? Hm, I think I did. They're sprouting! I even kept a bag out of the sun and it still sprouted.

Some schema about plants :)

Discussing what we know about plants with each other!

This was from awhile ago. I was working with a small group on correct use of capitalization.

AWWW. Engagement stories. So sweeeet!!!!

Look at Kaylee's cute story about her new sweatshirt and skirt. They are pink and sparkly! She went shopping at Justice. 

Older pic again. Sorry there. Writing our numbers to 20 and beyond now!

A Suggested Read...by K02 readers!

Today Bridger brought in a REALLY cool book called, Owney the Mail-Pouch Pooch. It is a TRUE STORY! We googled it and saw all kinds of pictures and then got into a funny discussion about how Owney can still be in a museum (taxidermy is almost impossible to explain to 5 year olds). I just told them it's kind of like the animals at the Great Plains Zoo (the inside part). Haha.

Thanks Bridger! The kids requested that I put the title on here for you all :)

Fun App

I suggest Stickman/Stickman 2 for the iPad! Very interactive! :) Fun for all ages!

Our Window Garden

We've been studying springtime for awhile now. We've read so many good books and learned about plants! Now we're starting our own window garden. The class was split when I asked them whether or not our seeds could grow without any soil. We will see!!!

Each day we take the gardens out of the window and draw/write observations, just like a scientist!

The Beginning Stages of Writing our own Story Problems

We've been using math mats (ponds, trees, grass scenes, etc) and 10 towers to think up our very own story problems. We started doing this as a whole group activity this week. The problem above was the very first problem we tried.

These are some fun shots of us working!

Check out these VIDEOS!!!!

Emilee came up with this great problem!

 

The problem belows features Cale. The class (you can hear them at the end) starts in right away mentioning the fact that we only have 10 cubes and cannot do a problem that goes above 10.

We then discussed if there was anyone that knew the answer to Cale's problem (10+4) and a bunch of kiddos did. We talked about this higher level strategy that is called 'I know my number facts.' This should NOT be forced on children...they will naturally develop these facts when they're ready and have had a lot of time to work with combinations, modeling with tools, using mathematical language, etc.