We're baaaaaccckkkk!

I haven't posted a blog since October! :-( Sorry about that! We have been so busy, going going going... I just haven't even thought about it!

In November we went on a field trip to the Arizona Science Center. It was a blast!

In December we had another field trip - this time to the Build-A-Bear Winter Celebration that St. Mary's hosts every year for the past few years. I am not sure how long it's been going on, but I know my class went last year. :-) The kids were partnered up with a high-school buddy for the day and got a free Dinosaur build-a-bear from the real Build-A-Bear Workshop to take home with them!

We had Winter break from December 22nd to January 2nd, 2009.. so we have begun a new year again, and are already about half-way through the school year! I can't believe time has gone by so fast...

In class we are learning about the following in each subject area:

Reading- We have been reading a lot! My class has started to pick up and run with words! They are doing so fantastic. We have been learning the ending -le, and the middle sounds ur, er, and ir. This week we are learning the long o sound, (/oa/ and /ow/), as in bow or boat.

Writing- We have been doing a lot better in writing as well! We write in our journals most every day, and we have been writing longer sentences and more sentences (3-5 is a paragraph)! The topics we write about ususally have to do with the story we are reading or our morning message for that day. We write a lot about animals!

Math- We have been learning lots of new and exciting things in math! We have been learning about shapes and fractions (1/2, 1/3, and 1/4) and probability. We have flipped coins and made tally charts of how many times the coin landed on heads and how many times it landed on tails. We have been reviewing addition and subtraction and patterns. We got some new math centers as well! (Lakeshore has EVERYTHING a teacher's heart could desire!)

Science- We haven't been doing as much with science, but we have recently been learning about recycling and keeping our Earth healthy and clean (and green!). We will start our next Science unit on Pebbles, Sand, and Silt at the end of this week, or the beginning of next.

Social Studies- We haven't been doing much with this either. I had wanted to get Weekly Reader to do with the class, but there hasn't been enough money in the school's budget for extra things like that. :-( So for now we are using our Social Studies big books (handed down from Mr. Soto) once in awhile. Otherwise, we are usually pretty occupied with all the other subjects and don't really have much time left to do S.S. anyway.

Okay well, that is it for now. Here are this week's spelling words and high-frequency words:

Spelling:
low, bow, row, road, soap, boat, wiggle, middle, talk, school

High-Frequency:
door, kind, made, who, would

~Ms. Stewart