Sunday, April 15, 2012

Cloudy with a Chance of Fairy Tales...

We had so much fun studying fairy tales and weather this week.  I absolutely love teaching fairy tales!  The kids are loving them too.  All week they have begging for more!  

On Monday, we discussed the difference between fantasy and reality.  Then, we learned about fairy tale elements.  We learned that often times fairy tales begin with "once upon a time" and end with "happily ever after".  We learned that they often have good characters, bad characters, royalty, magic, talking animals, and use the number 3 or 7.  As we read, we filled out a fairy tale elements checklist.


During shared reading, we read the classic Cinderella story and we read other books that were based on it.  Our favorite was a wild western version about a girl named Cindy Ellen!  After reading each book, we compared it's title, characters, setting, and ending to the original.



After reading Snow White we talked about how the queen wanted to be the most beautiful more than anything in the world.  So, we wrote about what we wanted most of all.




When we read the Princess and the Pea, we talked about the meaning of the word "delicate".  In the story, you could tell if a princess was real if she could feel a little pea under twenty mattresses and blankets.  So we made up our own princesses and named them.  We wrote, "My princess' name is _______.  She is as delicate as a___________."




In math, we have been working on our addition fluency with sums to five.  We made number flowers and lady bugs.  These looked great on our new Spring bulletin board!




We also played a fun new relay game.  We split up into two teams.  I would call out an addition problem and the two players would have to swat the answer with their fairy wand (I thought this would be a fun touch since we were reading fairy tales).  We had so much fun with this game and it was great practice!




In Science, we studied weather.  We learned about the water cycle, different types of clouds, and rain. We made some symmetrical clouds and talked about what they looked like.  We had a few butterflies and fairies!



 On Friday we did a fun experiment that showed us how it rains.  We learned that it rains when clouds get heavy with water.  So we filled clear cups up with water and put some shaving cream clouds on top.  Then we dropped some blue food coloring on top of the shaving cream clouds.  Once the clouds got heavy with the food coloring, it began to "rain"!  Wow!






Next week we will be learning about farm animals and what they provide for us.  We will continue practicing our addition facts to five.  Our goal is to be able to quickly and correctly recall these sums.  Next week we will focus on the addition fact families to five. For example. students will be able to recognize that 2, 3, and 5 are a family.  This will help with their fluency.  :)  

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