Friday News Flash

Winter Friends

As a fun art and writing project your students created a winter friend. We first went through the process of following step by step instructions to draw our snowmen while practicing our patience waiting for the next step! We did a rough draft version to practice our drawings and then a final draft version. Then students had to practice their patience skills again when using sharpie markers to go over their pencil drawing. Finally students were able to watercolor their snowmen but were required to mix watercolors if they wanted a specific color! It was a fabulous project that students thoroughly enjoyed. Here is a final version of a students snowman, I mean winter friend :)

Then we moved on to the writing portion. We brainstormed what traits we like in our friends and what traits we would want our winter friends to have. This is where we came up with ideas for writing stories about our winter friends. Students wrote ideas like "My winter friend is silly" or "My winter friend is kind." The students loved getting to write about their friends, and continuing into next week we will be revising our writing to add more details, such as "My winter friend is silly because he can jump!" Here are a few first drafts of students writing:

My winter friend is small and big!

My winter friend is funny

Geometry

We are off and running with our geometry unit and this week I introduced students to their very own shape books. We are using these books to look at different shapes, their sides, corners and where we see these shapes in our life. Students had so much fun hunting for shapes in our classroom and comparing shapes "Our cubbies are like squares! Well actually they are like rectangles!" Don't be surprised if students start pointing out all sorts of shapes to you! We are on the hunt for shapes everywhere! Here is an example of their math book and a page about circles:

Student Books

This week many students have brought in books that they have made and during choice time have been writing other books! It is the newest trend in our class and students favorite part is getting to share it with the class. At the end of the day I let students read their books to the class and then students give compliments to the author. It has been so adorable seeing students compliment others and support each others work. Even more than that it has been wonderful seeing kids call themselves authors and illustrators! I tell them all the time that all it takes is an idea that you want to share with others and then just drawing it or writing it down. If you notice that your student is working on a project at home, a picture, book etc. encourage them to bring it in to share with classmates! Here is a picture of a book that 2 students wrote together in class:

I can't wait for next weeks post. It will be filled with fun valentine's activities! Cheers to a great week!

Smiles,

Miss Adams