Happy Chinese New Year, Groundhog Day, Donald Crews, and more!

Over the last week we have been doing some new and exciting learning. As we just celebrated the Chinese New Year, students were able to make lanterns, dragons, and had a chance to see the Lunar New Year show at Queens College. For our parent engagement family members had the chance to come in and make dragons with their child.

A shows his dragon

show at queens college

Another holiday that we learned about was Groundhog Day. Students learned about Groundhogs and they found out he saw his shadow which means six more weeks of winter. We even made fun Ground hog day hats!

Our groundhog day hats!

We also in cooking made jello for a chinese new year snack, to show the color red as a symbol!

S measures the water for the jello

Also in cooking, students made slime with borax, water, and glue. They used measuring cups and pictures to help them figure out how to make the slime and also decided as a group if they needed more glue or water to make the slime. 

J and C make the slime

Also in choice time students have been working on tally marks, and surveys to see who wants what for snack and also how many cups they need to fill to have enough for the class. 

During the last writing unit, students were looking at books by Donald Crews. They used a lot of his craft moves to create detailed pictures to help them and also different things as sound words and big bold words to make great pictures. 

J and Stella share their writing

A and V.L share their writing

Now that we have finished writing with Donald Crews as our mentor author, students are going to work on oral storytelling to help them get ready for personal narratives . They will be working on telling the same story over a few days to help them use sounds, language, and even hand motions to tell stories. 

N and W share stories in writing

In choice time we have been exploring games we can play as well. This week we closed choice time to discuss and play board games. We are learning about the types of board games there are, how to play the games, what you need to play and also how to work together. 

We have used candy land, chutes and ladders, sorry, and snakes and ladders. 

students play candy land

We also have a student teacher Ms. Jeon who will be with us until the end of March. The students are enjoying having here here and being able to have extra support in the classroom.

In art Mr. Danny will be finishing up the art program with his last day next week. He will then be sharing with the families the art work in a gallery display. The students worked with paper today to create different images that resemble a play ground. They have been working on tearing, gluing and making different images. 

We also have been working in word study how to help each other with sight words. We have been using different words on the word wall and when students find words in their independent reading books with that word inside it, they are able to add it to the chart on the wall!

words that have at and the in them