The Mitten

This week we spent some time getting familiar with the book, The Mitten, by Jan Brett. This is one of my favorite books for winter! I love how silly it is and how true to life parts of it are... how many of you have single mittens at home missing their match?!If you haven't read The Mitten you should definitely check it out!

We read the book together on Monday and then each day a group of students read it as their listening center for the week. After reading, they filled out a sheet with their favorite part. Most of them liked the bear the best!

We also made our own retelling mitten. The children colored and cut out all of the animals and a mitten and then we put them together with a ziploc bag so that the children can retell the story to their friends and families. Be sure to ask them to do this!

On Thursday we did some "Mitten Math". Each table group had a mitten and we estimated how long the mitten was and how many cubes it would hold. Then we actualyl measured using cubes and filled them to the brim. Afterwards , we talked a little bit about what estimating means and how to decide if our estimate was a good one based on how close it was to the real number. This also went along with what we've been learning about more and less because the students had to decide if their estimate was more or less than the real number. We had a lot of fun... who knew you could have fun doing math!?

To end our unit on the mitten, we acted out the story as a class. This gave my students who are more kinesthetic or movement oriented learners a chance to shine!

The kids had a great time cramming into our homemade mitten! I think they will all remember this classic story for a long time to come!

Martin's Dream

This week was spent learning about Martin Luther King Jr. We learned about his life, his death, and his dream for all people. We read lots of great books about Martin Luther King Jr. and were even able to watch his famous "I have a dream" speech on youtube. The children were amazed at all of the people that they saw there. They said "That must be like 50 people!" I explained to them that it was actually 250,000 people. I guess we need to keep practicing estimation ;)

They recognized this scene in several of the books that we read and we talked over and over again about how Martin wanted people not to be "judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." We spent a lot of time discussing what these big words really mean and the children decided that no, it doesn't matter what someone looks like, but it matters whether or not they are nice, fun to play with, and friendly. I totally agree!

We had a big discussion about what our classroom would have been like if we lived in Martin's time. The children looked around and noticed who wouldn't be here with us and they were very upset to think that we wouldn't have those good friends and playmates. They all agreed that they are happy that Martin helped to change these things.

We also made a lift the flap book that talked about Martin Luther King Jr's dream. The children enjoyed working on this throughout the week and enjoyed reading it. I hope this will give them a memory of this important time in history.

I was very proud of the children and the things that they were saying about how life would be different and that they all are happy that we are all together.

I really think that the children don't notice the things about each other that sometimes adults do. They just see their friends, playmates, and buddies. I wish we could all think like that!

Winter Weather

I hope everyone enjoyed the second winter break that we got this week!

Before we left school last week we did some "weather" centers. They sure got us prepared for the big snow storm that was to come! We split into 3 groups and took turns rotating through 4 centers.

At one center, we did weather mats. Each child had a mat that showed a certain kind of weather. Then the children had to choose what kinds of activities went with that weather. For example, flying a kite goes with windy weather and building a snowman goes with snowy weather.

The next center that the children went to was making a weather graph. I gave the children a calendar with weather from the past two weeks. Then they used weather tags to make a graph showing the weather. After they were finished I asked them several questions about the graph including "Which weather was the most?" and "Which weather was the least" and my favorite "How do you know?". We have been working on this together as a class each morning and I was excited to see how they were able to do it themselves!

The next center was an activity on the smartboard. There were two children in their undies and the children had to look at the background and use clues (like snow or sand) to decide what season it was and then they had to use clothes to dress up the children like the should dress for that season. This is something important because I want the children to learn what types of clothes are appropriate for what weather. I have some who never want to wear a coat and I want them to understand when and why this is necessary!

The last center was called Weather Sort. I brought in a huge bag of clothes and asked the children to sort them and then tell me how they sorted them. Most of the groups sorted them into winter clothes and summer clothes. After they sorted, I asked them to explain and asked why those types of clothes were appropriate for that center. One group decided to dress up so I asked them what season they were dressed for and then I asked them to show me how they would dress for winter or summer. It was a really fun center!

These weather centers helped the children to think about the kinds of weather that we have and I was actually glad the winter storm came through because a lot of times this is weather that the children may not understand because they are not exposed to it!