Friday, February 6th 2009

The Magic Trains:
1.) Practiced writing their names with Ms. Brook. First, they traced their names and then they had to take their time and write their names on their own.
2.) Went to the Hebrew Home and sang at least ten different songs to the residents there (including “Little Red Caboose” and the “Thomas and Friends” theme song). The residents loved the music and our students enjoyed the trip. When we arrived back at school we relaxed and then had lunch.
3.) Learned about healthy foods with Ms. Debbie. We also spoke about sweets and how they are fine to eat once in a while.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND! The letter for next week is “N”.

The Diener Dinosaurs:
What a fabulous Friday! Today the Diener Dinosaurs...
1.) Did an AMAZING job singing at the Hebrew Home! We sang BINGO, If You're Happy and You Know It, Fifty Nifty United States, The Wheels on the Bus, Old MacDonald Had a Farm, several train songs, and a few of our old favorites! When we got back, we drew pictures of our favorite part of the field trip.
2.) Since we did such a fantastic job at our sing-a-long, we took a break from singing during music class today and continued to talk about telling stories without words. We watched another part of Fantasia and talked about what the story was telling us through music.
3.) Started working on our new 'Health and Nutrition' theme by discussing our lunches - we talked about what we ate and what kind of vitamins our various foods were providing for us!

The Mighty Dieners:
1.) In Math we graphed our weekly weather. It was interesting to see how everyone’s was different! When then worked really hard in our Calvert Math books.
2.) In Art we had a lot of fun learning about contrast! We got to choose between a black paper and using white paint or white paper and using black paint! We also learned about the French painter Georges Seurat who painted using contrast. He as well painted with the “dot” method which we tried. We wrote our names using chalk and dotted over our name with the contrasting color.
3.) We started our new theme for this month: Health and Nutrition! We began our lesson on healthy vs. sick.

The Golden Owls:
1.) In writing we are continuing with topic sentences using lots of details and examples and also a concluding sentence. We are splitting up into groups where Maisie works with the girls and I work with the boys. Smaller groups gives us more time to work individually with each GENIUS in our class.
2.) In math we are completing regrouping with an assessment and a few fun games. We will start working with money next week. I will be setting up a Diener Flee Market inside the classroom. This will gives the Kids an opportunity to be an employee and also a customer working on addition and subtraction.
3.) We also had each GENIUS choose a book and read to the class. This gives them an opportunity to work on fluency, expression, and also public speaking. I plan to continue this every Friday afternoon.