Happy Hanukkah!

Hanukkah this year was from December 1st to December 9th. After 8 days our theme it has come to an end. We will be studying Christmas all next week. This will complete our Festivals of Light theme. Can you believe how fast that went by?
How do you spell Hanukkah? There is no right answer! (Here are the different ways to spell it in order from most popular to the least popular taken from a survey done in 2009)

Hanukkah
Chanukah
Hannukah
Hanukah
Hanuka
Chanuka
Hanukka
Hannuka
Khanuke

Chapel
Gibbs Morris, Ella Heide, and Anna Heide had a lemonade stand and walked their neighborhood dogs. They collected over $30.00 to donate to Haiti. Congrats to them!!

Centers & Integrated Learning this week:

~Reading Scholastic Holiday news magazines and comprehension questions with Miss Fate

~Independent they worked in their Phonics books

~Reading Scholastic sight words and they were tested on reading the words with Miss Fate

~Continued Mountain Language as a guided group

~Guided Math Candle strategy game with Miss Fate & worked on Hanukkah theme pages

~The children had Mr. Darnell call Miss Fate out to the office and the children hid in the classroom with Mrs. Waller. The lights were off and Mrs. Wiedeman brought Miss Fate back into the room. All of a sudden the kids were yelling "SURPRISE" and hugging Miss Fate! Miss Fate brought in treats for her 29th Birthday for the kids and Andi McCarthy made homemade cinnamon rolls for the surprise party!! The children made a book written and illustrated by themselves for her Birthday. Thanks to Mrs. Waller for her creative ideas and to Kate McCarthy who said, "I planned it all!!" Miss Fate loved the surprise party. It was so special and she is enjoying her last day of being 28.








~Independent Spelling the children wrote their spelling words in a menorah & moved magnetic letters around to spell the words on a magnetic tray.


~Guided Writing center with Mrs. Waller- She read the story "Wild About Books" by Judy Sierra. The children picked their favorite animal and then wrote 3-4 descriptive sentences about it. At the end, they illustrated a picture of their animal. They were such great writers!

~Art center with Miss Fate we made Jewish Star of David ornaments and learned all about the menorah. They thought it was really cool that Miss Fate brought in two of her own menorahs. The children were very interested in learning that Miss Fate celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas.


~Guided game with Mrs. Waller of "The Case of the Sneaky Feet" which is a Phonics Skill game that teaches the children "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." For example "ee & ea"

~Handwriting center the children wrote about Hanukkah and illustrated a picture

~Listening Center was about a snowman and illustrated what happened first, next and last.

~Art center we made Holiday and Miss you cards for Landon. We will mail them out to him this week. We can't wait to hear from him and see how Landon is doing at his new school. The children used stencils to decorate their cards.

~Whole Group--Sparkle a spelling game with the entire class to practice spelling our words

Math this week:

~Miss Fate continued working on graphs. The children have learned about picture graphs, bar graphs, and now line graphs. They surveyed each other and tallied up the total amounts of their own results. Then, they took their data and plotted it on a bar and on a line graph. They answered all different types of questions about the graphs and compared and shared their answers.


~Mrs. Waller introduced ten frames with the children and showed them how to see numbers without 1:1 counting. She showed them why it is important to start grouping numbers and how it makes math so much faster.

~Mrs. Waller read "Math for all Seasons" By Greg Tang and "Mind Stretching Math Riddles" which helps working on counting by seeing groups and not 1:1 counting.

~Independent computer game center at www.primarygames.com they clicked on Holidays and played Hanukkah games since we won't be in the lab on Friday.

TNT (Try New Things)
The children learned the Dreidel Song. Then we split up into groups and played the Dreidel Game. It was so much fun! They kept yelling give me "Gimel!" (Hebrew letter that means give me the entire pot of coins)


Social Studies
We have been continuing learning all about the history of Hanukkah. They worked in their theme notebooks and watched a fact and fun short Hanukkah video from DisvoveryEducation.com They answered the quiz and questions orally with the click of the mouse at the end of the video.

Science
Miss Fate worked with the Super Science Magazines. The children were divided up into cooperative groups and they had to read their Super Science Magazines with their group. Each group had a different topic and then the groups shared their information with the rest of the class. The children learned about seven different topics and articles. This was good practice with cooperative learning. Mrs. Waller showed the children the results of the crystal snowflake hands on science experiment that she started last week. They loved looking and touching the snowflakes. We found out that the hotter the water the better the snowflakes. Thanks to Griffin Chu who tried this at home! He showed us that colorful pipe cleaners work even better than just white ones.

We did not have Hands on Science or Computer Lab this week due to the Paul Mesner puppets- Nativity show & field trip today. The children loved the puppet show. They were twelve feet tall characters that passed through the aisles throughout the church. Thanks to Stephanie Repine & Sarah Mathews for helping on the field trip. We really appreciated it!

Spelling Words this week...they are getting harder. The children are learning a song to help them spell because.

Teach them this song and they're sure to commit the spelling to memory in no time at all! (sung to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star")
B-e-c-a-u-s-e.
We can spell because, you see.
Seven letters from first to last;
We can spell it really fast.
B-e-c-a-u-s-e.
We can spell because; yippee!

Word List: because, about, had, four, look, orange, stop, that, will, yes
Challenge Words: Christmas, December, Jesus, Santa
Surprise the Teacher word

Reminders:
Book orders have been closed out & ordered
Spelling Test- Friday, December 10th
Spelling Packet is due Friday, December 10th
Christmas Music Program, December 16th in the morning
Talent Show- Thursday, December 16th in the afternoon
Books in the Bag are due Friday, December 17th or before when finished