Imagination Playground and Salsa!

The Imagination playground was a hit this week!  Our class visited twice and will have one more opportunity to go next week.  The kids had a terrific time working together to create a variety of playground structures to play with.
We had so many terrific examples of working together during share time this week.  Gracie, Sam, Claudia, Ian and Olivia all shared about their experiences working with others and learning to compromise.  We also celebrated Benjamin, Jack and Sam's birthday's this week.  We certainly have a lot of September birthdays in our class!
This week our Red Clover books were I Know Here, Bink and Gollie, and Born Yesterday.  During Writer's Workshop we have been creating accordian books for I Know Here, and writing a Chapter 4 for Bink and Gollie.  Next week we will continue to read more Red Clover books.  In Reader's Workshop we have been talking about what readers do and how to use our reading journals.  We will continue with mini-lessons about what good readers do next week.  This week we learned about blends and digraphs in Fundations.  Next week we will be learning about c, k, ck and rules for using these letters, and closed syllables.
Our math lessons this week focused on growing patterns.  We have been working in groups using structured math talk to discuss patterns, make conjectures about them and extend them.  An example would be looking at a pattern that shows us the first five arrangements and then trying to figure out what the tenth arrangement would be.  The following are links to the Bridges website that you might find useful this year.

http://mathlearningcenter.org/files/media/Parents/UnitIntros/B2Unit1Parents.pdf
http://mathlearningcenter.org/media/Parents/MathWithYour/B2_MathWithYour.pdf
http://mathlearningcenter.org/media/Parents/Vocab/BridgesVocab2.pdf

This afternoon the Firefly team made salsa.  We cut up all kinds of veggies to create a delicious salsa.  Here's the recipe we used courtesy of Stony Loam Farm for those of you who would like to make it at home:
4 large ripe tomatoes, diced
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
4 peppers or 1 hot pepper seeded and diced
1/2 cup onion, diced
4 tablespoons chopped cilantro/ and or chopped parsley
salt to taste
juice of 1-2 limes or 3-4 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
Combine the tomatoes with their juice, garlic, peppers, onion, cilantro/parsley and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a bowl.  Add the lime juice or apple cider vinegar and taste for salt.  We also added cucumbers, corn and black beans to ours.
Just a reminder that this Wednesday is picture day. We will be having our pictures taken at 10:10 am. 
Have a great weekend!

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Pictures of the Second Week of School

A big thank you to Elissa Best for taking all of these terrific photos this week!

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Hands On Nature and Red Clover Books

We spent this week getting back into routines and getting used to our new schedule.  We have been reading Red Clover books and introducing Reader's and Writer's Workshops through them.  We spend most of this week reading and doing activities connected to Who Stole the Mona Lisa.  We acted out lines from the book and pretended we were different characters in the book.  Our final activity was creating our own books telling the same story from a different character's perspective.  Everyone did an amazing job with this activity!  Today we read Stand Straight Ella Kate.  This is a story about a woman who had gigantism and how she was able to turn something that made her cry as a child into something that made it possible for her to lead a remarkable life.  Next week we will continue with this story and activities that support understanding of this story.  We have been reviewing letter sounds and formation in Fundations this week.  Next week we will begin Unit One which reviews digraphs (sh, th, ch, ck and wh), blends (sp, scr) and closed syllables, and teaches spellings of /k/ sound.
We have begun Unit One in Math this week.  We began the unit learning about glyphs and creating our own glyphs.  This unit focuses on patterning, sorting and number.  We were introduced to our first math work stations and have had time to explore with the materials we will begin using next week for a variety of activities that reinforce our learning in this unit. 
Our Hands On Nature lesson this week was about insect life cycles.  We watched a puppet show, learned about simple and complex metamorphosis and worked in small groups to reinforce our learning.  This lesson tied in nicely to some learning some of our second graders are doing about fireflies.  A big thank you to our HON parents for this fun learning experience.
Homework will begin next Friday for Firefly Second Graders.  Students will be be asked to choose three activities from a tic-tac-toe board to complete each week.  My intention is for these activities to give students opportunities to apply some of the learning we are doing in school.  Please feel free to give me feedback if this is not working for your family.
During the month of September, students in grades k-2 will have the opportunity to build, explore and play with the Imagination Playground.  Please check this week's Friday Folder for more information about this.  Please make sure to return the permission form by Tuesday or your child will not be able to participate when Firefly goes that day.
It was so nice to see so many families at curriculum night.  I know it is a very busy time of year and we really appreciate everyone taking time out of their busy schedules to attend. 
Have a great weekend!