Monday, September 28th 2009

Today was a busy (and rainy) day! In the morning, during our morning meeting our question of the day was: What is your favorite colored gumball? We learned that most friends thought pink was the best color, and the least number of friends liked the color yellow. We continued our math routines, and practiced counting on our fingers to 30, counted pennies to thirty, and used our number path to show how many tens and ones are in the number thirty. After morning meeting, we did a read aloud about Guinea Pigs, and we learned some new information about our furry new friends. We learned that it is important to keep their cages clean, and that some guinea pigs have long hair (but our pet Sammy does not).

Later this morning we practiced handwriting, and reviewed which capital letters start in the attic. Senorita Wesley's friends finished writing mystery letters, where they had to practice different frog jump capital letters. Mrs. Helfer's friends practiced starting corner capitals and reviewed frog jump capitals. We also practiced using the 2nd grade handwriting paper correctly as well. We are going to continue to work on this all year, because practice makes perfect :)

We also did our poem of the week. For Mrs. Helfer's friends, the poem was "I Love Fall", and for Senorita Wesley's friends, the poem was "El Abuelo". Both groups practiced reading the poem fluently, and thinking about what mental images came to our minds when we read the poem. After lunch, we did our Number of the Day, which was the number 14. We talked about different ways we could make the number 14 using different coin combinations, such as a dime and 4 pennies, 14 pennies, and two nickels and 4 pennies. We also practiced writing different number sentences (using both addition and subtraction) to make the number 14, as well as explaining HOW we solved the equation.

During math today, our green gators read a poem about sheep and practiced showing different number combinations to make the number 5. We practiced this using break-apart sticks and numbers, and showed different partners of 5. Mrs. Helfer's friends used secret code cards and money to work with the "teen" numbers. They practiced showing these numbers as a ten and ______ ones. It was a great day of learning!