March 1st, 2013- Rainbow City Closes

Highlights from the Week:

• Special Theme of the Week: Community Helpers
• Heart Word of the Week: said
• In language arts, we practiced visualizing in our heads what was being read.  We also worked on figuring out the main idea and details of a story.  In addition, we came up with rhyming words in the -op family, practiced blending sounds together in order to read them, and counting the number of syllables in a word.  A couple weeks ago, we also started focusing on letter formation and handwriting.  We started with "o" and "c".  We then focused on "a" and "d".  This week, we are working on "g" and "q".
• In math, we are continuing to work on sea creature story problems.  For one of our story problems, it told us that there were three whales and we had to figure out how many fins they had altogether.  We are not starting to create our own story problems.
• During our writing time, we have been working on a visitor's guide to our city.  With our visitor's guide, we practice writing our heart word this.  We also created a real map of our city and where the businesses are.  We then made a key for the map so people would understand what each of the pictures represented.
• In social studies, we learned about goods and services.  We learned that goods are things that are made or grown that people can buy.  We learned that services are things that people do for you.  We also learned about needs and wants through a fun "shopping" activity.  Last Friday, we got "paid" for working in our city.  We had a calendar that showed what we were going to buy each day of the week.  The things that they were buying were pictures of the items.  On Monday was toy day, but we were told that we could wait until Friday and buy toys then.  On Tuesday, we talked about how clothes are a need, so everyone had to buy some clothes.  On Wednesday, we talked about how everyone needs food, so everyone had to buy some food.  All week long, we talked about how everyone needed to save $10 because they had to pay rent.  We talked about how a home is a need.  By Thursday, rent was due, but many had run out of money.  Therefore, they had to do extra jobs around the classroom like washing tables in order to earn enough money for rent.  On Friday, whoever had money left was able to buy some "extra special" toys.  We had a really good time learning about needs/wants and saving money through our "shopping" activities this week.
• During community centers, we continued visiting and playing in the various businesses in the city.  The science lab opened this week and we explored gak that was made as a class.  After four long weeks of developing and playing in our city, it is now closed.  We are moving onto Dr. Suess next week!