Mrs. Garrabrant's Classroom: Olympics, Science Night & More!

We had such a great week full of learning and fun! The students worked hard in Literacy Lab, watched the movie "Mr. Popper's Penguins" and began reading "101 Dalmatians" chapter book aloud. The students have been very interested in the Olympics and wanted to learn more so we did many activities related to them! We sorted the sports from the Winter Olympics into 3 categories, watched and learned about the olympics, wrote about their favorite sport, created their own Winter Olympic sport, read books about them, worked on our PAX voices, had a Family Science Night, worked on a snowflake addition activity, shared our hard work with our Preschool Reading Buddies, had fun with our PJ Day that the students earned, worked hard on our iReady lessons and enjoyed playing outside when it was nice weather.

Take a look below for more details on our fun and busy week.

In Literacy Lab, students worked with me on guided reading and the vocabulary word 'learn'.

They wrote sentences using the vocabulary word. "I learn shapes." "I learn about animals.".

They also worked very hard on their iReady lessons!

In the listening center, students listened to the story "Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day", then drew a picture of their favorite part.

Mrs. Arnold worked with students on guided reading and highlighting the sight words throughout the book.

Mrs. Roland worked with students on guided reading and sounding out words.

Since we finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins, we watched the movie and compared how they were similar and different.

I began reading '101 Dalmatians' aloud to the students and they have been enjoying it so far!

Since the students have been so interested in the Winter Olympics, I planned many fun activities for them this week! First, we sorted all of the sports from the Winter Olympics into three different categories: snow, ice, and sliding.

Every day we watched recap videos of the events from the previous night. Here, the students are watching the recap video where the women's hockey team won the gold medal!

The students wrote about their favorite winter sport.

Here are some of the students writing.

The students also worked hard on creating their own Winter Olympic Sport. We discussed ideas of things we do in the winter that weren't already a sport in the Olympics and they even made up their own as well! You can see below some of the sports they came up with.

Snow Bowling

Snow Hiking

Ice Jumping

Snow Tubing

Making Snow Angels

Building a Snowman

Here you can see Van's book about his new winter olympic sport: Snowball Fight.

They had to document what equipment they would need for their sport.

As well as the rules for their sport.

And more information about their sport.

They also drew the uniforms that their players wear as well as their medal awarded.

Here is another example of Cwenlee's book about the sport that she created: Ice Gymnastics.

We also read and filled in answers for our 'Book of the Winter Olympics'.

Take a look below at the pages from our book.

In order to accurately draw the flag of South Korea on one of the pages, we looked it up!

They also wrote and drew what sport they would compete in if they were in the Winter Olympics.

We did a reading comprehension paper on Bobsleigh/Bobsledding. I read the paragraph about bobsledding as well as the sentences at the bottom and the students had to cut out the correct word and glue it in the appropriate sentence according to the passage.

Mrs. Phillip came this week for our PAX lesson and talked to the students about PAX Voices. We learned the 4 different PAX Voice levels and when they are appropriate to use them.

Mrs. Phillip gave each student a bookmark with the 4 different voice levels. She read the story using different voice levels and the students had to put their finger on the matching voice level on the bookmark. They loved this activity!

Thursday night was our Family Science Night. Thank you to everyone who was able to come make our evening so great! Below you can see the students and their families working on various science related activities. Here they are making structures using spaghetti and marshmallows.

They also had to make boats using aluminum foil and see how many cubes it could hold.

They got to learn how to make harmonicas!

Bouncy balls!

And lava lamps!

They also chose a pet and created an environment for them that would help them survive.

Students got to work with bristle bots/hex bugs and made fences for them.

On Friday, we did a snowflake addition activity. The students had to glue the snowflakes on the snow globe, color a chosen number blue and write the appropriate number sentence to match.

We also colored an Olympic numbers book.

The students shared their hard work on their Olympic writing with their Preschool Reading Buddies.

Friday we had our PJ Day that the students earned!

For the last 2 weeks, I gave the students a goal of passing 70 lessons on iReady, since we had two short weeks. The students went well past that and even passed 82 lessons!! They wanted to have show and tell so they have earned that and we will be having that on TUESDAY!

With the beautiful weather outside, the students enjoyed playing outside and drawing with sidewalk chalk. Amaiya drew a snowman with chalk which was funny!