Friday, October 31

Happy Halloween from Mrs. Voigt's classroom! This morning was a busy morning of testing our knowledge! We tested our brain power for sure! We were able to enjoy the whole afternoon with a Halloween party though! Everyone was very excited to share their costumes and the energy was not missing from this room! 

Have a safe and happy Halloween. We do not have school on Monday for teacher workshop. Take some time to read with your child over the long weekend!

Thursday, October 30

We had a visit from the dogs today and they were ready for Halloween! The kids love this time with the dogs and I have a couple of shots of the kids working while the dogs are here. They are so focused and keep on working even with two dogs in the room!

Here is a quick video of Super Speed Letters. We are working really hard on letter recognition and we will be moving onto Super Speed Words later in the year.

Remember to send your child's costume to school tomorrow. We will be changing into them after recess and lunch to have a small party before the parade! 

Friday, October 24

Wow we had a busy day! We have been working really hard and it is showing! Our morning meeting started with the shoe greeting where we got to pick a shoe and find its match. This is a favorite greeting of ours! After that we shared all of the fun things that we will be doing this weekend. It sounds really exciting! Next we played 4 corners. It was off to tiger time after that. We will be pre-assessing Unit 3 next week on Friday and regrouping for Tiger Time at that point. When  we came back from TT we started working on creating and proving subtraction equations! Set up a subtraction equation at home and see if your child can tell you where the total is. We have been working really hard on remembering that the first number is the total and the other two numbers are number partners. It is tricky to remember that the answer isn't the total in a subtraction equation! (ex. 10-7=3, 10 is the total and 7 and 3 are the number partners that make 10)

We took three different reading tests today as well. The first one was on the story that we have been reading this week, Curious George at School. When we take these tests, I read them aloud for the students and they are able to use their books to refer to. Then we took the vocabulary test that went over the High Frequency Words and words that have multiple meanings. Multiple Meanings is a tricky concept but we will visit it often throughout the year. Finally, we took our spelling test on the short o sound. On these tests, I will focus on the sound of the week for 1-8 and 9-10 will be review sounds. The star words will always be HF words from the current week. Please let me know if you have any questions on these items. 

For the end of the day, we worked on ghosts to decorate the hallway this week for Halloween. It is a fun project that works on patterns and creativity! They love working on it!

Remember to check out the pages section to look at the updates for the week. Enjoy the weather and the weekend!

Monday, October 20

We started off today with Recalypso. It was a fantastic way to start back after a long weekend break. The man, Ian Hagen, had us up and moving and getting our energy flowing to learn today! There are some videos and pictures to check out below.

After this we headed back to our classroom and continued to work on the count on strategy for addition. We are really getting the hang of this!
This afternoon we started working on the short o sound. This is the sound for the week and our spelling words will work on it! We also worked on the new High Frequency words for the week. There is a sheet coming home with these words today. Please take some time each night to work on them. Finally, there is a sheet to check in with you to see how school is going so far. We have hit the point of having more than 30 days of school and I would like to see how things are going from your perspective at this point. Thank you for the feedback in advance! Have a great night!

Wednesday, October 15

Today we had fun working with pumpkins. We talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin and compared it to the life cycle of an apple. Also, we made pumpkin ice cream which I think was the best part of the day! :) This morning in math we worked on starting with the greater number in an addition problem. The students talked about how this was easier because we didn't have as many numbers to found on. After that, we went to the library to listen to Gordon Fredrickson talk about being an author and we listened to him read A Farm Country Halloween. The students were very interested and intrigued by his story. Have a great long weekend and check out the pages to see the updates for next week!

Tuesday, October 14

Today we started working with money in math. We have been using coins everyday during our calendar time but today we used money to add. The students found the difference between pennies and nickels and we talked about how much each coin is worth. You will find a sheet coming home today to work on this. 

Then we did some taste testing with apples. We tried a bite of each color and then we made homemade applesauce in the crockpot. Our room smelled AMAZING today! This afternoon we talked about the life cycle of apples and how they grow on trees. We also made an apple tree through the seasons book. This will be coming home tomorrow.

Fall Apple Tree

Summer Apple Tree

Spring Apple Tree

Winter Apple Tree

Enjoying Applesauce!

Enjoying Applesauce!

We will continue with some fun activities about pumpkins tomorrow! Have a great evening!

October 10, 2014

Today was a whirlwind day! It has been a crazy busy week with all of the homecoming events as well! This morning we started off with an All-School Morning Meeting. The homecoming court came over from the high school to lead us in some cheers and to get us going for tonights game. The gym was movin' and groovin' for sure! Check out the videos below to see some of the action.

Then we came back to our classroom and worked on a few different strategies for adding. We have been working on using circle drawings and using our fingers but today we learned about the count-on strategy. Everyone was excited to use this new idea for adding. We also worked on our Super Speed Math and we tried to get a little further than last time. Next we took our Comprehension test on The Storm. After that we headed down to Mrs. Volek's classroom for book buddies.

After lunch we came back and finished up our Friday testing. We went through Vocabulary and Spelling and really did a great job. Finally, it was time for the moment all of my students have been waiting for all week......iPad rollout time!!! Mr. Jacobson came in and taught us how to set-up our home screen by taking a "selfie" and saving it. We got to take some fun class and friend pictures and had time to explore on the mini before heading out to one of our monthly counselor lessons.

After Mrs. Gores and the specialists, we headed home for a great weekend. Since we do not have school Thursday and Friday next week, we will not have a spelling sound or HF words to work on. We will start back up on Monday, October 20 with all of that. We will be doing some fun activities with pumpkins and apples throughout the week next week. Have a great weekend!

Monday, October 6

Today we had a visit from the Belle Plaine Fire Department in honor of Fire Prevention week. We had a great time learning about fire safety from the volunteers!

We also started working on the short i sound today. Keep up the hard work!

Thursday, October 2

Check out the video above! We tried out Super Speed Math today. We are going to be working on this two to three times a week. One student is the teacher and the other is the student and then we switch. Everybody gets two chances to be in each role. Super Speed Math will work on reading basic math equations and help to build computation skills. The goal is to help increase the speed that your child is able to get through basic math facts. I was really impressed with how well they did today! We will be adding in Super Speed Numbers, Super Speed Letters and Phonics, and Super Speed 100 which will work on the 100 most used words in the English language. These will build their ability to read sight words.

We also completed our NWEA testing today. Everyone tried their best and I am excited to work on building their skills! Have a great night!