March 25-29

 This Week

March 25 - 29, 2013

This has been an exciting and busy week in Laurel Creek.  We warmly welcomed Cate back to our community, enjoyed the coming of Spring and continued working on our Whale Study and How-To books.  We also practiced our subtraction skills, large number addition and worked on punctuation and capitalization in our writing.  We had a special visitor this week who taught us about insects. Celebrating the birth of our friends Elizabeth was another highlight shared with her mom and brothers. And as always, music, art and movement was found in our room every day.

Showing Cate The Love

Laurel Creek showered Cate with cards and books they made to welcome her back.

Cate's Return

Lots of smiles, hugs and high fives!

Art With Julianne

Students made colorful bound books

Q. How do we get the squid's tentacles red?

A. A Tempra Paint Bath

Choice Time
Creating a Morning Message

Creating a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Puppet Theatre Sewer in the Project Studio

Read Aloud
We bagan our new chapter book read aloud:  The Boxcar Children

Students Teaching Students

Students make the best teachers and teachers make the best students

Graphing: Coming to a Classroom Near You

Students got a sneak peek into data collection and graphing which we will be learning more about in the coming weeks.

Name Addition

Laurel Creek practiced large-number addition by adding up the numbers that represent the letters in their names.  Example:  a=1, b=2, c=3 etc.

Bill the Entomologist

Inigo's grandfather came in to teach us about insects and about the true life of an entomologist.

Reader's Workshop

Practicing independent reading

"What was the BEST part of your day?"

Closing circle: reflecting on our day together

Writing Share

An important component of writing is sharing with our peers and receiving feedback

"We gotta go now!  Bye!  Bye!"

Singing our goodbye song from the play structure.

Thank you for being born!

We celebrated Elizabeth's birthday by reading one of her favorite books, sharing a treat together, and showering Elizabeth with reasons we love and admire her.

Thank you Creekians, for a wonderful week together!  -Ben + Cate

Learning To Come:

  -  In the next weeks students will be finishing and publishing their How To Books and we will be launching a new unit on All About Books.  Students will be writing books on topics they have become experts on, relating to our social studies and science learnings.

  -  In the month of April "POETRY MONTH" students will be reading and composing original poems.  They will learn different styles of poetry.  Students will also practice reciting poems aloud to their peers.

  -  This month students will continue working on their reading: practicing to decode words, read with fluency, work on comprehension and retelling.  This month we will also focus on visualization while reading which will tie into our poetry unit.

  -  In math this coming week we will be working on collecting data, taking surveys and graphing our information.

  -  We will be continuing our Social Studies unit on the ocean and whales.

  -  Laurel Creek will plant flowers from seeds and learn how plants grow and how seeds spread.  

  -   As a community we will continue thinking about the power we have as individuals and groups and ways we can "Make our World a More Beautiful Place."