Buckaroo news for October 20th-24th

This has been a super busy week but filled with lots of fun and great learning.  This week in word study, we worked on the sounds of /sh/, /ch/ and /th/.  We learned a chant to go with each one.  Ask your child to share these with you.  Each individual word study team is also working on short vowels, long vowel patterns, or beginning consonants.  Each week your child will be bringing home evidence (rainbow words, words written 3x each, word races) of what they are working on in their teams and you can help them by reviewing their work with them at home.  In writing workshop, we learned to stretch words like bubble gum when we are writing  so that others can read what we've written.  Writers say words slowly and write down all of the letters for the sounds they hear.  We also learned that our stories are richer when we include details.  Together, we did a shared writing where we wrote about going to the pumpkin patch.  I told it first without any details and the children were practically screaming at me because I left out "the good stuff."  They turned and talked with each other about what should've been included and I wrote the story as they dictated it to me.  We agreed that their version was much better than mine:).  We learned that ideas for stories are happening everywhere all the time and we can capture those stories in our hands and put them in our pockets to pull out later for writing down.  We can use the fingers on our hands to help us to retell the story with detail.  We also began learning how to use our dictionaries to help us to write unfamiliar words.  In science, we are continuing our study of bats.  Ask your child to share what they've learned so far.  In math workshop, we have begun learning ways to use a ten-frame to help us add and subtract numbers to 12.  The concepts have been especially challenging the past two days but please understand that we are building a foundation for future learning so your child may not get it just yet but we will continue to work on these concepts throughout the year to strengthen that foundation.  In reader's workshop, we learned how to do the last two parts of the Daily Five which was Working on Writing and Word Work.  On Wednesday, we got to give it a go and I was amazed at how independent they already were.  During this time the children know that I will be working with small groups of children each day to help all of them to become stronger, lifelong readers.

Next Thursday is our 50's Day celebration.  I will be dressed in full 50's attire including bobby socks, saddle shoes and a poodle skirt.  My hope is that all of the children dress in 50's fashion as we sock hop our way through the day:).  

Next Friday is our Harvest Party and the children will be dressing up and parading around the school in the afternoon.  Please send your child's costume with him/her as we won't be wearing them all day.  A HUGE thank you to all of the parents that are helping to put our celebration together for us!  We can't wait!

The SCE spell-a-thon is coming up very soon.  A paper went home today explaining what this is.  It is a lot of fun and a great way to raise funds to be used at SCE!

Our schedule for next week:  Monday - Art    Tuesday-Music   Wednesday-Library   Thursday-P.E.   Friday-Art   the following Monday-Music

We made bats to hang from the tree.  A mother bat can find her pup from a lot of pups by smelling them.  We made bats and our teacher hung them up.  

Bats go out in big groups when the sun sets.  We learned that vampire bats suck blood from cows but it doesn't hurt them.  Bats are the only flying mammals.  Some people are baffled by bats.  Bats are warm-blooded.  Bats use echolocation in the dark.  One type of bat can fit in a teacup.  It is the vampire bat.  Flying foxes are the biggest bats in the world.  Bumblebee bats are the smallest.  Flying foxes hold their pup.  Mama bats can smell their pups in thousands of pups.  Bumblebee bats have a wingspan of six inches.  Vampire bats can jump up.  Vampire bats are the only ones that can run on the ground and take flight.  Most bats aren't able to hold themselves up on their feet.  Flying foxes have a wingspan as long as a bathtub.  Fruit bats eat while they are flying.  Fruit bats also eat fruit because their name starts with fruit.

This is the Daily Five board.  The Daily Five board is for us to pick what we want to do for Daily Five.  One of the Daily Fives you can go on a laptop to listen to stories or go on CD players.

Eagle eye is when you look closely at the picture.

We are learning about how bats smell their pups to find them.  This boy is trying to find the vanilla and that one is the pup.  Lemon was on the other cotton balls.

She is shaking an egg with rice in it.  The mama bat had to find the insects which is the egg rattling with rice in it.  She had to use her ears and echolocation.  

We made a circle out of bears in a rainbow. 

Buckaroo news for October 13-16

This has been a short but busy week for us at Camp Buckaroo!  We learned a poem about bats as we will begin learning about these fascinating, but slightly creepy, creatures next week.  The children are very excited about bringing their poetry/songbooks home for the long weekend to share with you.  I hope that you enjoy listening to your child sing these songs to you.  Please send the book back with them on Monday.  In Word Study, we worked on learning and applying the hunk-and-chunks of /all/ and /ing/.  Ask your child to share about Word Wall Fun.  In Writer's Workshop, we are learning to write down our personal narratives in detail.  We call them small memory stories.  I shared one about how I used to catch fireflies when I was young and I'd put them in a babyfood jar with holes punched in the lid.  They watched me revisit the piece later in the week to edit it so that I could zone in on the important part to add more details.  They are already doing the same to their own!  In Math Workshop, we have worked on using ten-frames to show parts of ten.  Today we took the post-assessment for Topic 3 and the pre-assessment for Topic 4.  See the photos below to know what we've done for our apple study for science.  In Readers Workshop, we have learned how to Read to Self and to Read to Someone and how to coach someone if they are having trouble with a word or understanding the text.  This week we learned how to use the laptops and the CD players to Listen to Reading.  

Here is our schedule for next week:   Monday - P.E.   Tuesday - Art   Wednesday - Music   Thursday - Library    Friday - P.E.   Monday - Art

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The girl in the middle had her birthday on Monday.  We were doing a creativity.  We are making trees out of tissue paper so when we hang them in a window it looks like stained glass.  We were making the craft for fun.  When it shines in the window it makes different shapes.  We did not have glue on the tissue paper.  It was a sticky circle.

We are pointing at our apple KWL chart.  Some of us were covered.  We learned that apples sometimes have chemicals on them so we have to wash them.  Seeds can be called pips.  There is a star inside the Red Delicious apples.  The Yellow Delicious are very sweet.  We know this because we did a taste test.  The green apples were called Granny Smith and they were very good.  Apples are in the rose family.  We learned that salt saves the apple from oxidizing.

October 6th-October 10th news from Camp Buckaroo

Hello Families!  This is just a small look at our week of amazing learning at Camp Buckaroo.  Remember that the text in green is what the children asked me to type for them.  This is called shared writing and they look so much about the craft of writing from this small but powerful weekly activity.

Parent/teacher conferences begin next week.  If you haven't signed up for a time or you need a reminder for your date and time please let me know.  I am really looking forward to talking to all of you.

The 50th day of school is the day before our Harvest Party celebration.  I like to celebrate this milestone in a big way with the children by dressing up in clothes from the 50's and spending the day learning about this decade.  I would LOVE to have your little ones join me in dressing in 50s attire for this day.  I will be wearing a poodle skirt and sporting a pony tail:).  We will be talking more about this as the day gets closer.  

The next day is October 31st and we will be celebrating in the afternoon.  However, I'd like to start the fun in the morning of the 31st.  I'm asking for six parent volunteers to come in and lead a small group of four children in some fun pumpkin activities.  Please let me know if this sounds like something that you'd love to do the morning of October 31st.  If each of the volunteers could bring in a pumpkin and tools in which to carve the pumpkin that would be great.  Please let me know if you'd like to be one of the six!  The first six that respond will get the honors:)

The schedule for next week:  Monday is P.E.   Tuesday is Art   Wednesday is Music    Thursday is Library    NO SCHOOL on FRIDAY!  The following Monday will be P.E.

These girls are observing the parts of an apple because they are doing an experiment.  They are looking for the skin, flesh and seeds.

This boy is looking at the apple.  These boys are looking for the same parts as the girls.

We did an experiment called Save The Apple from oxidation.  It means the air hitting the flesh and makes it brown.  This team tried salt water to keep the flesh from turning brown.

These boys were using apple cider to make the apple stay fresh. 

These boys tried apple juice to keep the apple from turning brown.

These girls are squeezing the lime into the bowl with the apple slice.  One of these girls is sneaking a lick of the lime.

These girls used purple Gatorade in their bowl to keep their apple fresh.

They used orange juice to keep it fresh.

The apple in salt got the least oxidized.  We found out that salt preserved the apple.  This means it kept it the freshest.  The lime juice got the second least oxidized because when we tried the lemon it worked and limes are related to lemons.  They have acid.  The apple in orange juice got third because it has a little bit of acid.  

The apple in Gatorade turned purple and got into the flesh.  It has chemicals in it to make it purple.  It's a dye.  The apple in the apple cider looks yucky.  It looked gross.  

We had guidance with Mrs Elfers.  She taught us about feelings like sad, happy, mad, excited, cranky, crabby, weird, sleepy, loving and others.  

After writer's workshop, we listen to each other share stories that we've written.  This boy is sharing a story about a coliseum in Italy.  There were a lot of questions for this boy's story.  

Math assessment tomorrow!

Here is my sweet friend reminding all of you that our Topic Two assessment in math is tomorrow.  I sent a Reteaching workmat home with each of them to review the concept of subtraction.  It wasn't an easy concept at all but they hung in there with every lesson and tried their very best!  I'm so proud of them and their perseverance!  Keep in mind that your child may need a lot more time and experience with some of these concepts before they will be able to show mastery.  The assessments I give help me to monitor your child's progress and to know how to help him/her better.  

Hello Families!  My plan is to publish to this blog every Friday with the children's help.  I will take pictures throughout the week and then post them on Fridays and the children will help me to attach the captions for each picture.  It's a great way for us to review the week and for me to see what stuck with them.  I will color code the captions this way.  If it is in blue then the writing is from me.  If the text is in green then the text is from the children and they've told me what to type:).  Sorry that this post is so picture heavy but it encompasses two weeks worth of great learning!

This is our related arts schedule for next week:  Monday - Library   Tuesday - P.E.  Wednesday - Art  Thursday - Music   Friday - Library again

We are doing really good!  They are speed-sorting their word study words.  We try to sort our words as fast as we can and we put them in rows.  
Our word study teams are now underway!  I've met with two teams already this week and will meet with the other two next week.  It is on an eight-day rotation with each of the four teams working on letter/sound features that they need based upon an assessment I gave them at the beginning of the year.  Formal spelling lists will not be coming home but you will see weekly evidence of the feature your child will be working on.  For instance, blue team is working on beginning consonants while red team is working on the digraph /sh/.  

This was on Talk Like a Pirate Day!  We were dressed up like pirates.  It was really fun!  Some didn't dress like pirates but they could still talk like one.  We got funny pirate names.  We went up to the fourth grade classroom and watched Mr. Keefer and Mrs. Brothers act out the story How I Became A Pirate.  Blackbeard left us a treasure map and we searched for the treasure.  We found it in the laptop case.  We ate chocolate coins, popcorn, fruit snacks shaped like sharks, and cheese puffs.  We had so much fun on this National holiday:)  

These girls got their picture taken as pirates!

One of the boys in this picture is holding a bag of pirate booty!

These girls were playing a pirate game!

One of the boys is doing a peace sign on Pirate day!  

We are making applesauce.  It was fun!  It was Johnny Appleseed's birthday.  The applesauce was yummy!  We were making apple trees with shredded colored paper.  Johnny Appleseed would have been 240 years old on his birthday.  We learned from one of our students that he never wore a pot on his head.  People told tall tales about him and his life.  One was that a rattlesnake tried to bite his bare foot but the skin was so tough the fangs couldn't get through.  There were even a couple of students that are working on writing their own tall tales.  One is even being written about me!!  

Two days ago we got our books in a bag!  One of us read for twenty minutes.  On Monday we bring our books back and get new ones.  We read the same books over and over until the next Monday.  The children have been asking me for weeks when they would get to take books home from our classroom and when the day came on Tuesday they were so excited!  The children self-selected five "warm-up" books from their book baskets.  We talked about how I need to stretch out my muscles and warm them up before I do my heavy lifting and their "warm-up" books serve the same purpose.  They get their brains ready for the hard work of applying reading strategies to familiar and new texts.  The children will choose new books every Monday so they need to return their bags every Monday in order to select new ones for the week.  A great way to build fluency  and increase comprehension is to reread the same texts over and over.  For their nightly reading, record the minutes they read to you and/or you read to them.  They can be from any books whether from the library or their own personal libraries but I'd like for them to always "warm up" with their practice books first.

She was reading really quietly and she was building stamina.  She is reading as hard as she can!  This is what we call "Read to Self" and it's part of our Reader's Workshop everyday.  We have practiced the right way as well as the wrong way to behave during this time and we had a blast acting out both ways.  Ask your child to share with you what happened when students modeled the wrong way:) 

She is reading Piggie and Gerald.  She was reading quietly.  She was building stamina.  She was staying in one spot.  She was reading the whole time.  I'm so proud of them for remembering the behaviors for reading during this time!

She is staying in one spot and she is building stamina.  She is starting right away.  

They are sitting EEKK!  This is called Read to Someone.  Here we are practicing the second part of our Daily Five.  The first part is "Read to Self" and this part is called "Read to Someone."  Ask you child to share with you what EEKK means.

This is our new friend reading with his book buddy.  They look cute sitting together.  I was so proud of all of the children and how they welcomed and embraced our newest student!  Our class is now complete!

We were making a village with the blocks.  The village looks good.  It has a bunch of parts.  It took us all of indoor recess.  It has a lot of details and only girls made it!  The kids loved indoor recess today!  So creative!

They were playing with Playdoh at indoor recess.