Another new baby!

Mrs. Sanford is a grandma for the first time! McCoy Matthew Sanford was born this weekend. He was 5 lbs. 3 oz. She is on cloud 9!

Thanksgiving graphs

We played some math games with Runts candy. Then we made a class graph with our individual graphs. We had little magnet dolls of ourselves that we use for data collection.

Mrs. Day had her baby girl!

Mrs. Day had her baby on Saturday, Nov. 21st. Mikaela Nalani Day was 7 lbs.1 oz. and 18" long. She has lots of dark hair. She is precious. Mrs. Day will be back in January. Congratulations!

Our Thanksgiving Feast

Our feast in our room was great! We got ready by pushing our tables together banquet style. We had placemats, pinecone turkeys, and cornucopia centerpieces. We wore our pattern necklaces. We practiced

good manners for our big day next Thursday.

Pentominoes

Dominoes are two squares that share one full side. Pentominoes are 5 squares. The students explored all 12 pentomino shapes. Then we placed them into a large rectangle. They had to flip, rotate or slide the pieces into the puzzle. There are thousands of ways to create rectangles with these 12 shapes. As they discovered a way, I let them explain their solution to the class on the overhead projector. These spatial activities are vital for young children to develop real life spatial activities like organizing a closet, packing for a trip, putting items in the refrigerator, visualizing plays for basketball, etc.

Addition and Subtraction Math Games

The students have been using manipulatives to explore number combinations. When they see how addition and subtraction works, they store that information in their brain for application later. They become better problem solvers in life. It's so much better than simply memorizing facts. That will come as a result of their work.

Communication Game

The students worked side by side. One was the communicator and one was the builder. The builder couldn't ask questions. The communicator needed to describe the color, shape, size and position on the mat. (top, bottom, left, right, above, below, etc.) After the communicator described 8 shapes, they both checked each other's mat to see how close they were. Then they switched roles. For writing, I have been teaching about using descriptive words to describe what you did, so that we could almost see it in our minds. This fun math activity had many applications to life.

Turkeys and Pilgrims

I hope you all got to read your child's Turkey Tale. They were great. Some of them cracked me up. The big turkey tail was made from your kids' footprints and hands for the brown feathers.

When this turkey word slider comes home on Tuesday, practice the words for our fluency test.

The students made these cute pilgrims and tried to visualize what they would do if they lived in pilgrim times. We read some amazing books by Kate Waters that helped them empathize with pilgrim children.

HALLOWEEN MATH GAMES AND COSTUMES

We had a great Halloween Math Party on Wed. Thank to our fantastic mom helpers, we played rotating math games all morning! Mrs. Elbel and Mrs. Hobson treated us to "Bloody Fingers" (wheat breadsticks with red dipping sauce) and apple juice. It was yummy and healthy. Our parade was extra fun too. What a lot of amazing costumes!

Leaf Animals

The leaves came out of the leaf press and the children glued them onto a watercolor wash that they painted last week. They are amazing LEAF ANIMALS.