Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

This week, we have been practicing our colors and learning about our school using the story "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"

We started on the very first day of school. The brown bear left us a clue leading us on a wild goose chase! We followed the clues all around the school, meeting different animals along the way. On our hunt to find the next clues, we visited the computer room, library, multipurpose room, cafeteria, art room, music room, bathroom, and front office. Whew! Are you tired yet? We sure weren't! After our tour we played some fun games to learn our friends' names.

Our first day of lunch was a lot of fun, and when we came back to the classroom we talked a little about the classroom rules and our clip chart. Ms. P took the class outside on the playground, and the class learned all about how to stay safe on the equipment. Finally, we enjoyed some snack and rest time after such a fun-filled morning. Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and head home after a great first day!

The next couple days we have been revisiting the story of Brown Bear. Our whole class had to work together to create a Brown Bear mural. It's still a work in progress right now! We worked in groups of three or four to use markers and color our section the correct color.

Then on Thursday, we each received our own paper version of the Brown Bear book. We used our crayons to color the animals the correct colors, and then practiced using our pointer fingers to read the book back as a class, and quietly to ourselves. We will keep this books in our book bins for the next few weeks, so that we have a collection of familiar books to read.

We also started using our classroom set of whiteboards to practice writing our letter Aa. We learned the letter A looks like a tent, that needs to be wide enough to fit a person, but not so big it fits a bear! It has a horizontal line in the middle that we also called a log. We know our A looks the right way if it looks like a person who has their legs stretched apart wide. For a lowercase a, we make a small circle and then a straight line down. Everybody did an awesome job remembering to put the line on the right side! We talked about how a lowercase a leaves a tiny mouse hole betweene the circle and the line (at the bottom of the letter), but that we don't want to leave a giant hole for the cat to get in!

We talked a lot about classroom expectations and good character trait. We created anchor charts about teacher responsibilities and student responsibilities in the classroom. Then later in the week, we made Friendship Salad! A friendship salad needs lots of sweet things, like helping, sharing, complimenting, and respecting others' feelings. Those sweet things were shown by cantaloupe, melon, oranges, and strawberries. Then we talked about how sometimes people might behave in a selfish, unhelpful, mean, or hurtful way. We said acting like that is being a "rotten banana". Yuck! We don't want any rotten bananas trying to join our classroom's friendship salad! After mixing all the fruit, and throwing away the mushy banana, we ate our yummy salad!

The rest of this week we spent learning more about our classmates and studying our own names and the names of others. We sorted our names by boys and girls, and then later put them in alphabetical order.

We also took notice of the first letter in our names when we worked on a torn paper gluing project.

 Last, but not least, we sang a fun version of the Wheels on the Bus, where we learned our friends' names.

 

Come back next week to see the fun we will have learning how to use our calendar books, understanding what good writers do, and unscrambling the letters in our names!