We had a BLAST today exploring all of the games everyone brought for our new unit of inquiry! Yesterday we classified games we know based on whether they were movement games, board games, dice games, card games, video games, and others. This gave us a great opportunity to build social skills, problem-solving skills, and to make new friends in class. If you haven't brought a game yet, you still can! We plan on keeping them in class for awhile to keep exploring and learning all of them throughout our unit.
What didn't we do with pumpkins today? We measured the circumference, counted the ribs, compared 2 sizes of pumpkins, observed with tools, our hands, and more! We covered every subject area and had a blast doing it. Check out how we made a compost with our pumpkin. What will happen to it over time?
For our week of caring actions to become a S.P.I.C.Y. class, we participated in a caring act each day. We cleaned up for other classes in the cafeteria, wrote a book about how to be caring, delivered cards to our best friends, picked up trash at the playground, and brought things to donate to low income schools. I will be donating the brand new items to my former school, Oakmont Elementary, in Crowley ISD (North Texas), to use with their yearly angel tree. All other items will be given to local charities. Thanks so much for your support, families! This was such a meaningful week for the students. Check out all of our fun!
We really love share time during bootcamp! We are learning how to be good speakers and good listeners. Students love asking each other thoughtful questions about their items, and learning more about their classmates. We also squeeze in some communication skills during this time and address each other by names, ask politely if we don't remember someone's name, and use kind words to thank others for asking questions or for listening. Sometimes students will raise their hand just to say something nice, or use "glitter words" to compliment someone else's items or speaking performance. Always awesome to hear them putting our new skills to use!
Pictures from Mrs. Hougham's guidance lesson where we learned how to stand up for someone when others are using "muddy words". Several students got to practice how to firmly be an up-stander and tell them that "Spicewood kids do not act like that"! We always have a great time learning with her!
We are learning about a new component of our Reader's Workshop, "Word Work". These are stations where students practice various engaging games to build letter/word fluency. We have stations where we spell with alphabet beads on pipe cleaners, use magnets to spell our sight words, rainbow write the alphabet, and build letters with linking cubes for now. We will get more and more choices for stations as we build our fluency through the year!
Photos of us learning about and honoring International Peace Day. Students all across campus at Spicewood learned about how to be peace-makers instead of peace-breakers! Our poster shows all of our ideas for ways we can be peace-makers.
Photo overload! This
is all of the fun and learning we have been doing since the beginning of school. Check us out while we are exploring manipulatives, learning routines, and showing off our work! These were taken while we were discovering our free play centers, doing our Skittles experiments, learning how to label with sticky notes, and playing with our new tools for school. Some students were photographed with some original creations or patterns they decided to make on their own during exploration time! Enjoy! :) |
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