Week of January 4, 2010

Happy New Year!

We'll be talking about the weather in kindergarten for the next couple of weeks. We will read some non-fiction in How Do You Know It's Winter? by Allan Fowler and When Winter Comes by Robert Maass. We'll also read Snowballs by Lois Ehlert and get lots of ideas for making the perfect snowman...so let it snow!!!

We have a new season, a new month and a new year. We'll discuss all of those and then read some wintry books. First some non-fiction: Ice by Helen Frost, and then Snow, a Caldecott Honor book by Uri Shulevita and Stephen Gammell's Is That You, Winter? We'll also have plenty of time to check out some wintertime books!

 

We wrapped up 2009 in second grade with author and illustrator Jan Brett and that is how we'll begin 2010. Ask your child what makes her illustrations different from others. Our story this week is Berlioz the Bear, a delightful story about Berlioz who is supposed to play his double bass in the village square at eight. But there is a strange buzz coming from his instrument. What could it be? Hmmm! We will watch the video of this book paying special attention to the background music from Flight of the Bumblebee.

The time has come to start the third grade biography projects! This week Mrs. Schenck and Mrs.Wilson's students will peruse the biographies in our library and choose a famous person that they would like to learn more about. Our remaining third grade classes will not choose their biographies until the week of February 1st, therefore we will read together the biography of Snowflake Bentley, the beautifully illustrated Caldecott Medal winner about the first man who was able to photograph snowflakes. We will also get to view his snowflake photographs in Mr. Bentley's non-fiction book Snow Crystals.

We've got some housekeeping items to take care of in fourth grade this week. Our first item of business will be to make sure everyone has completed and taken their blue dot test on their December book of the month. We are then going to have some review time about how our library is set up, looking up books by title, author or subject in our Alexandria computer cataloging system, and where to locate our book. Alexandria is the same system that is used at Madeira Middle School too, so by the time these students hit that library, they'll be old pros! Finally, the students will be encouraged to choose their January book of the month.