October Fun!

We had a day of orange fun in October. The children helped the teachers clean out pumpkins. We wore orange clothes and ate orange foods (Cheetos, cantalope, carrots, cheese, and Cheese-Its). We decorated small foam pumpkins and played Autumn Bingo.

Stellaluna, read by Mrs. Phillips

http://ccebom.wikispaces.com/October+2009



Here is a link to Principal Phillips reading our October Book of the Month, Stellaluna by Janelle Cannon. Our book is dedicated to all of our new friends at Chets Creek this year!

A Bad Case of Stripes

We read a book called A Bad Case of Stipes by David Shannon. Then we all brought in a small pumpkin. Last Wednesday we painted our pumpkins in stripes to match Camilla, the main character in the book. In the afternoon we glued hair, a bow, and eyes on our pumpkins and then drew a nose and mouth 0n with a Sharpie marker. Just for fun we germinated lima bean seeds and put them in soil. Our plants are starting to grow! This is important because Camilla became striped in the story when she pretended that she didn't like to eat lima beans when, of course, she loved them! Because she wasn't being true to herself, she broke out in all sorts of crazy things - the stripes were just the beginning.

Rekenrek Math Workshop

Today we used a rekenreck in math workshop. It helps us recognize groups of ten and five. We will use it to add and subtract, and to give kids a concrete image of addition and subtraction strategies. First we played a little game to see how quickly students could recognize numbers such as 22 or 36. This awesome tool helps students "see" number groups!

From Liquid to Solid

Who knew that going from a liquid to a solid could be so delicious? Yesterday in science we took milk, sugar, and vanilla, surrounded them with ice and rock salt, shook, shook, shook, and made our own yummy ice cream! Of course as scientists we predicted what might happen and reported our findings on a lab sheet. Stop by the bulletin board in our hallway to see more pictures and read our work.

Independent Reading Bags

Everyone has an independent reading bag which contains ten books. Every Friday we switch out our books. We all choose 3 easy cheesy books to help our fluency. We also choose 4 just right books, and 3 challenge books. Noah has chosen an Amelia Bedelia book, some Magic Tree House books, an action chapter book, and a favorite picture book to read next week. He is using his bag as a pillow to get comfortable as he reads!

By Noah and Mrs. Metzger

Calendar Math

Every day we do Calendar Math. First we look for patterns on the calendar. We notice what was yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Then we count how many days we've been in school and talk about how many tens there are. We have a clock (that's new). We are working on telling time. Today we counted by fives on the clock. We also have a wallet. Every day we add a penny. When we have 5 pennies we trade them in for a nickel. If we have two nickels you could make it a dime. Finally we have our birthday graph. We have most of our birthdays in July and none in March!

By Brandon P. and Mrs. Metzger