Friday, Dec. 3rd

Today in class we started our new genre unit: fantasy. So far we have read a fantasy book (the gingerbread baby) and decided that fantasy books are pretend (fiction), and have REALLY unrealistic things in them such as talking animals and magic. We will be reading tons of fantasy books in the next couple weeks and writing our own fantasy story using a gingerbread bog/girl as the main character.  To get the kids excited about this, we made gingerbread man-shaped pancakes! They didn't really turn out looking so much like gingerbreadmen, but they still tasted good!

Here's what the pancakes ended up looking like...





but they still tasted good!

We also wrote a "If I were a ______" poem.  We took a fun picture as ourselves dressed up as the character we wrote about to go with the poem. They are TOO cute! You will love them when you see them and it was a great way to get the kids using more details and sensory images in their writing.

In math we worked on more double-digit addition.  We made a string of lights with math addition problems on them.  I was very impressed with all the students who are starting to have a "lightbulb moment" with this concept and starting to catch on and become confident!! They were very excited to get to write their facts on the lightbulbs- I think they would have done 100 more if I would have let them. Its great to see them so excited but I am really running out of space to put all of our projects on the walls & ceiling in here!

Homework binders went home today.  There is new WEEKLY reading log in the binder and a MONTHLY genre tally chart and graph. Please take time to look it over.  Learning the different genres is a very important part of the elementary curriculum- as well as graphing.  Doing this will help your child internalize both concepts.

Have a good weekend!