Workstations, Treasure Blocks, and more

Last week was a busy week in our classroom! It was another hot one but the kids did a great job working through it! We have many things that we are working on in our classroom, take a look below to find out about some of them!

We have had a few friends share their treasure blocks now, including Mrs. Garrabrant. The students love hearing about their friends interests, seeing pictures of them and their families and finding out what they chose to put on their treasure blocks. Here are some of our friends sharing their treasure blocks.

As they share their treasure blocks, I make a web of their interests, family, favorite things etc. The students use these webs to draw an illustration about their classmates. They cut their name apart and glue it back together in the correct letter order, using the web as a resource as to how to spell their name. We have been focusing on adding details to our illustrations as well.

I know the pictures are kind of dark but these are the webs for the friends that have shared their treasure blocks as of last week.

We spent a lot of time last week focusing on introducing our workstations. We have exploration (science and math skills) and literacy workstations (literacy, reading, and writing skills).

We had to learn how to find our names on the pocket chart in order to figure out which work station we were working in, where to find the baskets/materials, how to use the materials properly, and how to put them away in the correct spot and just like we found them.

One of our friends brought in tree
bark that he found and we added
it to our science area for the
children to explore!

Destiny sorting frog counters.

Sebastian working with pattern blocks.

David exploring in the science area
and documenting what he is finding.

Kuryn working on making patterns with unifex cubes.

Exploring magnets and plastic bugs in the science area
with magnifying glasses and tweezers and then
documenting their observations.

Roniya and Reiley exploring with the
large legos in the engineering area.

Sorting marker caps and counting dots on dominoes.

Tracing sandpaper letters and then making them with
wikki sticks.

Matching number cards to the card with the correct
number of objects

We have transitioned out of our quiet relaxing time and
into D.E.A.R (Drop Everything And Read) time and
the children are really enjoying finding a quiet space to
enjoy a book!

We have been recording the number of days that we have
been in school and each day we count our number line
together.

Practicing doing the 'robot' to practice our sight word me.

Here are some of our word wall cards that we have done for the letters L, M. S & T. We make a list of things that start with the letter (like the picture of the A on the left) and they choose what they would like to illustrate.

These are some of the books we have read from this great series from Joy Berry. I read these books when I was growing up and it talks about important social skills such as lying, cheating, whining, trowing tantrums, being bullied, and many more. If you have the opportunity you should read these with your child. I am not sure if they are at the library but I know they can be found on amazon. Our students really enjoy listening to these stories!

On Friday, Mrs. Atkin's class was kind enough to let us come to their classroom. They have a promethean board so we watched and listened to the story Pinkalicious on the Barnes & Noble website. We also sang songs about counting, colors, shapes, letters and their sounds and danced. I know our classes will become close over the course of the year and I can't wait for them to share their work with each other in the future.

Have a great week!! Don't forget Wednesday is PICTURE DAY!

Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant