April 5, 2013

Welcome Back!

We can't believe it is already the beginning of April! The children seemed to come back refreshed from a great vacation! We SPRUNG right back into work and had a lot of fun doing it!

Back-up!

The week before vacation was SOOO busy! We had two special events that we would like to share. 

The Star Lab!

The Star Lab was truly an amazing adventure that the Marsens took together.  We were able to learn all about the sun, the planets, the constellations, and so much more!   Room 13 loved every minute in the space bubble! Check out the picture of our class after returning to Earth!


Suzy Kline Author Visit

This was an amazing visit by a truly wonderful author! In the weeks leading up to Suzy Kline's visit, we conducted an author study of many Suzy Kline books.  The children truly loved reading, listening to, and discussing many Horrible Harry books.   The day Suzy came was exciting and interesting.  She shared with us her writing process, and what she does as a writer.  She shared her inspirations for many of her stories, and we loved hearing how she collected her ideas (the seeds).  Some advice she offered was, "Always carry a small notebook in your pocket. You never know when a seed to a story will happen." Suzy then had the teachers, Mr. Sinanis, and Mr. Grishman(wow!!!) perform a play from a part of her Herbie Jones series! Ask your child about our acting skills! Finally, Suzy took the opportunity to give the children and the teachers a couple of writing prompts.  She had us share what we wrote, and provided postitive feedback to all! Thank you Suzy Kline!

Folktales:
(People/Tales) Old and Retold!!
Room 13 was back at work and ready to launch Round 4 of the writing process! We began the week by immersing ourselves in different kinds of Folktales.  We read Tall Tales, Fairytales, and Fables OH MY!!!!  Ask your children about some of the wonderful Fables we read and the lessons they learned!  We are so proud of our all the children for actively trying to apply the lessons they are learning to their lives each day! We are looking forward to our trip next week to the Hofstra Playhouse to see Aesops Fables!

                                                                     

Text Savvy

As the year moves on, the children continue to learn about different kinds of texts.  The past two weeks, we learned all about Flyers during our Shared Reading process.  Each child then  began creating their own Flyer advertising something that they are experts on and that they could help others with, in the computer lab.  Look out for these, flying home sometime next week!

Scientist of the Week- Sam!

This week, Sam truly left his "mark" on the entire class.  He posed the question "What colors are in a black marker?" He clearly demonstrated that when a marker is drawn on a paper towel and then dipped into water, it contains the colors blue, red, and green! Check out Sam the Scientist in action!