Happy Friday! This week, we have been focusing on winter and all that it has to offer. We read a wonderful book called Waiting for Winter, which is a book about animals in a forest who have never seen snow before, and end up mistaking items that are white, soft, wet, or cold for snowflakes. At the end of the book, it finally snows and the animals enjoy it by making a snowman. This sparked many conversations about what snow really is and hibernation.

The students are also in the process right now of getting ready for their snowman project, which will consist of them creating a snowman out of recycled items that have been brought in from their homes. The students have found containers, sorted, and labeled their items. I can't wait to see their creative snowboys/girls!

In math, we have been working on putting numbers in the correct order (0-20,) and then doing different activities with those numbers. I found that this was a great opportunity for student-led instruction. A student may choose to clap a certain number of times and have the students listen and point to the number that the student was thinking, or have the class point to the number that comes before or after the number that is said. Another opportunity for student-led instruction was when the students were playing "monster mash," a game that was also sent home for you to enjoy with your child. Two students were able to get up in front of the class and use words and clues to help the other children guess the number.

Here is Kaydence and Sophia working together to teach the class. It was interesting to hear them work hard at the words they spoke, for they knew they had a responsibility to say the "right words" for the students' sake! They did a great job.

I have also introduced the concept of addition and subtraction using concrete materials. This can be done by you at home as well: dinner is a great opportunity!

Heart words for the week of December 5th: away, in, it, find, go