Super Student Teacher

      Miss Jacobson has been full time teaching for 2 weeks now, and she has done some amazing things with these kids!

      First up, some really adorable pictures of the kids reading to the preschool students. During ITBS testing time we had to go to recess a little later in order to not interrupt testing so the preschool class asked us to come show off our reading skills by reading to their students. The class did so great reading from their browsing bags and not letting the littlest ones get too squirrely!

      Miss Jacobson introduced mapping the mapping unit with a great visual for the kids. The kids shared their ideas for each part and filled out what they already knew about maps, what they wanted to learn, and ideas for how they could learn the new information. 

I love when they come up with their own ideas, they
come up with some great stuff!

      They made their own compasses this week. I am hoping to share some more pictures of the maps they made next week!

      Eric Carle is our author for the month of February. The class spent a week doing activities with "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."
      Miss Jacobson included science into her writing by discussing the life cycle of a butterfly.

    
This art project is why I'm never letting Miss Jacobson leave! She had the kids draw on coffee filters and then sprayed them with a hairspray/water mix so they tie dyed. Then they glued them into the life cycle of a butterfly.

How darling are these!?!?!

XOXOXO

      I love this sweet class and Valentines Day was such a great day to celebrate with everyone!

      Miss Jacobson did a writing activity in which the kids wrote words that came to mind when they thought of Valentines Day. Then they painted symmetry hearts and glued their writing to them.

      How cute do they look when they are all assembled! I'm going to have to keep Miss Jacobson around when she's done so she can keep up the craftiness. :)

      The kids worked through Valentines packets throughout the day. This is one of the valentines rhyming pages.

      They practiced writing their numbers 0-100.

      The kids made adorable Valentines bags. It was great to see how creative they were even though they all got the same supplies!

      The following are the pictures of all of the kids during the party. They did a wonderful job handing out all of their Valentines and were so sweet with all of their "thank you's!" after opening their candy.

Oh, Mo!

      Willems that is.  During January we are studying Mo Willems and using him as a jumping point for our writing. The kids LOOOOOOOVVVVEEEDDDD the pigeon and were already drawing him everywhere  (backs of homework, word work time, hands, etc.) so I took that and ran with it by adding in some words.
      My classroom camera isn't saving the time/date stamp so sorry if the pictures are a little out of order.

After we read lots of pigeon books the kids came up
with the characteristics to describe him.

A close up...I guess I could have picked some of
his better attributes to take a picture of!

      I am loving our magnet unit. The kids are gaining such wonderful vocabulary and are really stretching their science minds. Hopefully they are using some of this great language at home: push, pull, magnetic, repel, and attract.

     The below pictures are one of the final experiments in which the kids had to get a car UP a ramp using just magnets, paper clips, and tape. 

These smarties hooked the paperclips over the cars "hitch"
and used the magnet to pull it up.

Recording his first attempt. We did 3 rounds
because real scientists attempt things more than once.

Taping paper clips to their car.

Hooking her truck up so she can pull it up the ramp

   

       We also investigated if magnets would work through water. I filled plastic soda and water bottles with water and magnetic items. The kids predicted what would attract through the bottle and what would not, then they got to play! They were making so many discoveries that I didn't get very many pictures, but here are a few.

They used different sizes of magnets to see what would work best.
If you look really carefully at the top you can see that they got the paperclip
to rise up out of the water. 

These girls are working on the pipe cleaners. All
the kids were amazed that they were attracted to the magnet.

These ones used the super magnet and got a huge clump
of items up the bottle.

      Miss Jacobson will be full time next week! She is so amazing, wonderfully creative and the kids are loving working with her. I will be popping in and out of the classroom so I can pull some small groups for remedial interventions while I have 3 weeks of "extra" time. That means that I won't be able to get as many pictures, but know that even if my posts are shorter or longer between I am so very impressed with the work that Miss Jacobson has been doing with these kids.


Edit:
I almost forgot to put up these ADORABLE snowmen that the kids made for our snack!