Spreading the Love

Our class celebrated Valentine's Day last Friday. We started off by passing out our Valentines to each other.

Bags ready to be filled!

Let the fun begin.

Then, we took our bag of goodies and sorted them into two piles: one for cards and the other for candy/treats. This was quite the task!

After everything was separated, we put the candy back in our bags and taped the cards into a special Valentine's Day keepsake book. After everything was taped, I had students find any words they know and write them down in their book. Words like: love, you, me, too, for, the, friend, etc. 

During specials, we had Jump Rope for Heart in the gym where we jumped our little hearts out!

For a snack, I gave each student M&Ms and they counted and graphed the colors. Of course, the best part was getting to eat them!

At the very end of our day, we put up our "heartprints" onto the school kindness tree. We wrote sincere messages to one another on paper hearts and gave it to a classmate. I had students draw names from a jar and think of something nice to write that would make someone smile. As a class, we came up with the following messages...

Please play with me

I hope your child was able to give you your Valentine card. They worked really hard on writing a special message inside. I totally forgot to have them finish the sentence that was on the front of the card! I meant to have it say, "I have fallen in love... (and on the inside it was supposed to say) WITH YOU!" Woops. Hopefully you understood it and aren't worried about them being in love with anyone else besides yourself. :P 

What are we learning in class?
In science, we are continuing to learn about day and night. We talked about the sun and how it rotates around the Earth. One day, I took the class outside in the morning, at noon, and towards the end of the day. We discovered that the sun was in a different spot in the sky each time we went out there! 

Morning: sun was above the lunchroom windows

Noon: sun is above recess doors

Late afternoon: Sun is near the woods 

In reading, we've been talking about fiction vs. nonfiction books and what is similar and different between the two genres. We also shared with our reading buddies what we learned from reading nonfiction books. 

At reading stations, we're continuing to have five consistent stations: 1) i-Pad, 2) word sorts, 3) writing, 4) word work, and 5) popcorn words. Below are some samples of student work during this time. 

Writing station (freestyle writing: they can write about whatever they want)

Word word: writing and drawing word families (words that end in the same sound)

Word sorts: word families 

Digraphs

We are continuing to love playtime at the end of the day. I opened up two new stations: a new magnetic one called Weeble and a marble run station. 

Reading station

Railroad tracks

Crazy pipes

Marble run station

Weeble station

Coloring station

Animal station