Classroom Snapshot, Thanks and Reminders

I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving filled with lots of love and family! I had a great Thanksgiving with my family, and enjoyed getting to spend 5 days with my little guy. We also had a great time listening to Christmas music and putting up our trees and decorations. My favorite tree in the house has to be sons tree that he picked out last year. If you didn't know my son is truly a basketball guru and can tell you anything you want to know about basketball including, every team Shaquille Oneal has ever played on! He's 4! Crazy! I know, but what can you expect when you have Varsity Assistant coach as a dad. Anyway, his tree happens to be my favorite because it is the Fighting Illini colors, which is his favorite college basketball team and has basketballs as ornaments!  Maybe we have a future Illini Alum? Who knows! So, I said all that to say, I hope your Thanksgiving Holiday was also filled with laughs, memories, and joy.

So it was great seeing all the kids today, and they came in ready to learn, which was great because we had a pretty busy day. Here are few things we did today:

Today we:

• took our pretest on geometry because that is our next focus unit, which I am super excited about. I love Geometry!
• practiced our reading responses during writing time. We practiced answerinf who, what, when, where, and why questions from our text. Then we put them altogether to make what we call a sentence stretcher.
• introduced a new shared reading book called His Majesty, the King, which is an excellent folktale about a king who wanted to go to moon, and decided to command all his subjects to bring a box so they could stack them as high as the moon. The King did all this at the dismay of the Queen.He finally had almost reached the top, but sadly he was one box short to his desination of the moon. So what did he decide to do.... he commanded his servants to take the box from the bottom of the tower and place it on the top. Everyone warned him that was a bad idea, but he is the king! As you probably guessed the tower came falling down with the King landing on top. With this book, we are working on Story traits, such as characters, setting, problem, solution.Funny side story: I think this was one of the abosolute cutest thing I have ever seen. As I read to the students the part about the King commanding the servants to take a box from the bottom and place at the top, one of our classmates facial expression was absolutely priceless! Her face started off as look of concern, ho wis he going to reach the moon. When she heard the King's not so brilliant idea her face slowly began to turn into a quizzical frown, as she began to realize that his idea was not going to work. I truly wish I had a camera because it will defintely be a memorable moment everytime I read this book in the future.
• began reading a great book by Dr. Suess called Batholomew and the Oobleck, during science. This book is excellent because it lends itself well to a discussion on Solids, liquids, and gasses. Additionally, tomorrow we further our discussion as we experiement with matter and make our own Oobleck! (Pictures to come tomorrow!)

Overall, we had an excellent day, and I am really excited about tomorrow!

Thanks:

• Our Thanksgiving feast was a success because of the great families we have here. The students had a wonderful time. Thank you to all the families who were able to contribute. Everything was so yummy!
• To Mr. Petty for coming in and being a mystery reader this past week! I I think I may have forgotten Mr. Flores who also came in to be a star reader a couple weeks ago! Thanks again we can't do it without you!
• To all the families that offered to donate an item towards our Science Experiments. It is truly appreciated.

Reminders:

• Naglieri Test Scores went home today.
• We are in need of Mystery Readers! Please click the link above if you are interested. We have three full weeks left before Christmas break and we would love to have some mystery readers! So far we have had moms, dads, aunts, and grandmas. Remember to pass the word on to family memebers too! Thanks!