Four Winds, Guidance, and iPad

I hope you are having a great week! We're busy as always (in a good way) at school. Here's a look at some of what we've been up to on Monday and Tuesday this week...

The Four Winds puppet show--this month's theme is snow. I am always so amazed with how well students retain information from these puppet shows. It's remarkable!

These coffee filter snowflakes were amazing! I think I need to do a quick video tutorial to share with everyone. They were just so gorgeous and so much easier to cut than regular paper. Thanks, Mrs. Gamelin!

So intent on his work!

Beautiful!

Look at those snowflakes!

More gorgeous snowflakes!

Students collected snow (yes, we managed to find some behind our school!) and put it in cups. They then drew a line and predicted how much water would be left when the snow melted. Many were surprised at how little water was in the cup today when they returned to school and checked out their cups. It will be interesting to repeat this experiment when we study solids/liquids. I hope we'll have some fresh fluffy snow by then to use for comparison!

Guidance--we summarized some of the things people can do to "attract" rather than "repel" our friends and everyone chose one of these tips to put on a friendship magnet to bring home. Most didn't make it home today as you will see below. I will encourage students to bring them home tomorrow!

"Be friendly!"

"Be a good sport!"

Careful artists...quality work takes time! :-)

These were left on the easel after school...I think everyone liked how they look together!

SWR--I found another great app to use for working with word families (Word Wizard). Students love the iPad and we made this a whole group activity by putting it under the document camera and projecting it onto the Smartboard. We have some more tech-savvy ways of sharing the iPad in the works. Stay tuned! Also, I know a lot of great apps but am always looking for more. Feel free to send any recommendations to me!

We are spending some time this week reviewing strategies to help when you're stuck on a word in reading. We have some great new beanie baby animals to use as props to help remember the strategies (thank you, Kaleb's grandmother!). The strategies reviewed today and tomorrow are pictured below.