Finishing up Weight and Lots of Word Building!

We bagn an illustration study and students are learning to look at books like writers.  Today we looked at the book The Emperor's Egg, which we read last week during Writer's Workshop.  Students noticed that they can tell that it is windy and snowing just by the illustrations because the illustrator Jane Chapman drew the snow in swirls covering the blue pages.  Some students thought that maybe they would try this in their writing if it made sense.

Last week we began reading (and singing!) some of my favorite poems from Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup with Rice.  As we read the poems together students then work to circle upper case letters and sight words.  The sight words (words readers and writers should know very quickly) we have worked on so far are: I, a, is, the, to, at,  in.  Students are working on recognizing these letters in print and adding them to their writing.  As you read with your child at home be sure to point out these words!   

In Math we are finishing up a unit on Weight.  Today we focused on making a scale balanced or equal and predicting which objects would be heavier or lighter despite some being bigger, or taking up more space. Students used balls of play dough to demonstrate that even if you take one ball of play dough and break it into smaller balls it still weighs the same amount.