The kids worked really hard on these and they look great. You might notice the handwriting in this picture. One of our big focuses in class recently has been writing neatly and not letting our short lower case letters go above the mid-line. The mid-line is the dashed line on each of the three lines shown below. Many of the students have found this to be quite challenging because it requires them to write much smaller than they are used to. Even though it is A LOT of work, it has certainly paid off and the students' handwriting has improved so much. When we work on our handwriting like this, with our letters staying below the mid-line, not only are we working on their handwriting skills, but it also helps improve many of their other fine motor skills. Please encourage your child when writing to try and keep their letters below the mid-line.
We have also started some other fun holiday crafts. We made some adorable looking winter trees, using triangle-shaped sponges. Then the kids used their fingers to make ornaments and other decorations on their trees. This was such a simple activity, but they turned out so nice and the class seemed to have a great time with both steps of this craft.
Our new P.E. unit for the month of December is Dance. We love dancing so much as a class and this led itself perfectly into our English Language Arts story for this week. One of our favorite dance videos is below:
We listened to the story, "Jonathan and His Mommy" where they go on a walk and do all sorts of different walking movements. As a class we tried some of them out and had a wonderful time! We also listened to the story, "Move" and we discussed different types of movements that animals can do. Later, we compared those animal movements and tried them out ourselves. We tried leaping, sliding, slithering, waddling, running, and even flying. We quickly determined that humans DEFINITELY CAN NOT fly, but we still had fun pretending.
Also, with Language Arts this week we learned a new sight word: "a." Now our list of sight words has grown to seven total: I, like, the, and, see, we, a. Keep practicing those sight words.
Even with all of our work time, we did manage to find some fun play time, too. This week the students had a chance to play with Legos, Wheels and Links, Megablocks, and Puzzles.
This afternoon, the school honored the students who had "Awesome Attendance" for the first trimester. This meant that they did not have more than 2 absences and no more than 3 tardies or left early days. There were a lot of students who were being honored. These students were able to enjoy a root beer float with a parent! Keep up the great work!
We have also been keeping up on our Lexia reading work on our software program. Many of the students have made a lot of progress. If your child comes home with a certificate from Lexia, it means that they have gained a level in their reading progress online.
