Welcome Back

Aaaaaand we're back! I cannot tell you how great it was to see all 19 smiling faces this morning.  I missed everyone so much and couldn't believe how long vacation felt! Thanks to those of you who made it to conferences at the beginning of the week, it was great to catch up with so many of you as well.

This week will be a bit of easing back into our routine and catching up on some things that weren't finished before vacation so don't be surprised when you don't find homework in your child's folder today.  

We started our day by sharing a few of the favorite things we did on vacation.  It sounded like everyone had something special to report and enjoyed their time with friends and family over the break.  

We completed our last lesson in Unit 7 in math today and it was all about symmetry.  We learned how to make symmetrical designs with one sheet of paper.  Some of our shapes were SO cool!  We loved showing them to our classmates to see what they thought they looked like!  We had lots of alien heads, fish, and hearts.  

In reading we practiced a new routine called a word sort.  We sorted words based on their initial (beginning) vowel sound and color coded them on our paper.  We loved this and were surprised at how often different vowels can sound similar.  We will use our word sorts when we are at the Word Work station during literacy.  We are almost finished our read aloud- The Year of the Panda and are anxiously awaiting it's finish.  We cannot wait to hear what happens to little Su Lin. 

In writing some of us are working to finish the illustrations of our realistic fiction stories and the rest of us are free writing.  We have some students writing poems, songs, non-fiction stories and comics. 

It was a wonderful first day back together!