Jim Aylesworth Visits...

Yesterday we had a real "treat"....author Jim Aylesworth came to visit our school. We have read many of his books here at school. One of our favorites was his retelling of The Gingerbread Man. In it he wrote a new song for the Gingerbread Man. Be sure to listen to it in our video. Another favorite is The Old Black Fly. He shared with us how he was inspired to write a book about a big nasty fly! You can visit his web site for more details about Jim and all of his books. We didn't know he used to teach first grade! Wow! He even shared with us his next two books that haven't even come out yet. We can't wait to read them in class. It was so wonderful to meet Jim and have him share his books and thoughts with us. He is very funny and you can see by the children's faces how fascinated they were by him.

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Things That Come In 2's...

We read two books called "The Mitten". One was written by Jan Brett and the other was written by Alvin Tresselt. We talked about how the two books are the same and how they are different. Mrs. Blakely wrote our ideas down on cards and we sorted the cards by things that were in the Brett version vs. the Tresselt version and things that were in both versions. We use hula hoops to make a venn diagram.



From there we talked about things that come in TWOS. A lot of kids took pictures of things in our room that come in 2's. Take a look at the pictures we took.


(Note: Katlin and Stephanie assisted with the wording of this post.)

Goodbye Friend...

Today we had to say goodbye to our friend Samantha. She is moving and will be going to a new school soon. We will miss her dearly! It has been so nice to have her in our class. We took a few pictures today. It's so hard to say goodbye to good friends. When we had our last No-Cook Night, Samantha shared that she can make funny faces. We thought it might make a sad day more fun if we could have some good laughs.We'll miss you Samantha! We hope you have fun at your new school. We know you'll make lots of new friends....but don't forget us!

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Carpet Games & Painting...

During "Carpet Games" kids like to do puzzles. We have a puzzle of the United States. We lost one piece. ;-(

The boys made a rocket ship out of "pattern blocks" that we use on the carpet.
The kids were painting faces for the "snowsuit" projects.

(Note: Photos & Dictation by Kara & Katelyn)

Music Makers...

Last week we played the xylophones in music class. We learned how to play in the middle of the bar. The sticks are called "MALLETS". We learned how to hold the mallets...you hold them in between your two fingers and then wrap the rest of your fingers around. The bars on the xylophones have letters on them. Miss Ellis told us which letters to play. We had so much fun playing them. We learned two new songs.
(Dictated by the P.M. class.)

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Samantha & Spencer...

Samantha and Spencer took good pictures of books on the book shelves in our classroom. Then Mrs. Blakely turned the pictures into a chart that we can read in our classroom. You can print out a copy for home and read along if you like: BOOKS CHANT.

(Dictated by Samantha)

The Dogfather, Part II... ;-)

Happy New Year! We are off to a fantastic start in '08. Tonight we had our second "No Cook Night" at The Dogfather in Bartlett. It's always so nice to see so many familiar faces in a place filled with fun, laughter and great food. Thanks to all the families for coming out to support our efforts in raising money for our school. As always, thanks to Tony and "The Crew" for their part in helping us reach our goals!

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