This week we continued our focus with partner work in both reading and writing. The kids are really working well this way and are helping guide each others' thinking. Next week we will be wrapping up our first writing unit by editing and fancying up our favorite story we've written so far this year. We will wrap up the week with a writers celebration. In reading we will begin our next uint which will focus on strategies such as letter sounds, word patterns, and sight words to help us with words we don't know. We will also learn how to check and fix words we know aren't right.
We did start our new math unit last week. This unit will focus on addition and subtracting families and taking a look at fact families.
Project Calvin got off to a great start this week! Some kids have already brought in some money and we are watching our classroom container fill up! I plan on counting and totaling up the money every couple weeks or so. I will make sure I keep you in the loop about how much money we are raising. The kids have such huge grins when they can dump their money into the container = )
We had such a great day on Friday with the Hudsonville Fire Department! The kids were able to look at and hear about the fire equipment fireman wear. We also got a close look at a fire truck and see all the cool compartments and equipment those trucks hold. One of the favorite things the kids got to experience was the smoke trailer. Inside they learned some fire safety tips for inside your home and then they got to go to the back where a room was filled with pretend smoke. The kids got to practice dropping to the floor where the air is more clear and crawling on their hands and knees to climb out the window. It is such a safe way to see what a room filling with smoke looks like and how you can get safely outside. We wrapped up the day by writing thank you letters to the fire department and making and eating a yummy firetruck snack.