Lots of Literacy

This week the Rainforest classroom learned vocabulary words beginning with the letter "L". They continued to build sentences from sight words, previous spelling words, and new spelling words from the family "in".  Using play dough the students spelled the new words of the week and their last names.  As the day unwinds, the students take turns reading to the class, building confidence in reading skills.

They worked on addition and subtraction problems using counters and the Montessori addition and subtraction strip boards.  Students are adding up to sums of 18 and differences from 10-0.

Adventures of the "OT" word family, letter v, and math sentences

               In the classroom we worked hard as we continued to learn how to write sentences, figure out addition and subtraction sentences, practice our syllabication, and enhance our artistic skills.  Rainforest students have fun reading to each other while boosting their confidence of being in front of an audience and teaching those in the audience enhanced listening skills.  They are learning the importance of teamwork while learning to become a productive community.  Everyone has a job and each student learns the importance of their role. We had fun acting out the characters of the book "From Head to Toe" by Eric Carle.  The children enthusiastically rolled, skipped, hopped, curled, and arched their bodies along with the story book characters.  Using stamps of different objects, animals, and shapes, students enrich their artistic skills while identifying beginning letter sounds. The "ot" word family challenged the children and resulted in an absolute success.  The smiles on the children's faces light up as they discover they are capable of spelling and reading.  Another concentration this week included the letter 'v', it's phonetic sound, and 'v' vocabulary words like vortex, verb, vertebrae, virtuous, vivacity, volcano, vigilant, vascular, vowels and Van Gogh. 
              This week we visited the San Jose Mission and learned about how the early Spanish settlers lived with the native Americans. The park ranger was so descriptive we could almost see the settlers doing their everyday tasks.  We also experienced hissing rattlesnakes, snapping crocodiles, sneezing bulls, and a rip roaring bull ride during our visit to the Tower of Americas.  We look for ward to another busy week in the rainforest classroom.  :)

TPRI Week

This week we continued our TPRI testing and our student's progress is encouraging. They love taking the test and view it as a challenging game.  Each time it is someones turn to be tested they raise their hands asking to be next.  Our weekly endeavors involved sentence building, spelling word tests, and addition math sentences.
They are having fun with "Show and Tell". They are able to practice speaking in front of an audience, being good, respectful, listeners and expressing their feelings about important things in their lives. Our students are fun loving, creative, and energetic. We just love keeping up with them and their energetic, little minds.   

Maps Maps Maps!

There is a wide range of maps utilized in our everyday lives from "where would I find..." to "what will the weather be like today".  The rainforest class is actively learning about the utilization of maps through play.  The incorporation of math into the hands on activities also teaches students addition while developing fine motor skills and artistic creativity.     

Phonics Fun Leads To Reading Fun

Our Rainforest class has been busy learning our letter sounds, learning the alphabet in Sign Language and  Learning colors in 5 languages, Spanish, French, Japanese, Hebrew, and English. This semester we began putting our skills into practice by Reading some of our Beginning Readers. The children are so excited to learn that they have the ability to to put their skillls into practice.
We are putting sentences together with our sight word collection and we are getting ready to learn the difference between a noun and a verb. Our children are also reading to their classmates during story time and are being read to at least 5 times a day with a question and answer lesson at the end of each story to improve their listening skills. This week we began TPRI Testing and so far we are very happy with the demonstration of progress in skills.
We encourage reading Beggining Readers at home and the use of websites like Starfall.com, Raz-Kids.com, ABCMouse.com, BrainPop.com, E-learningforKids.org, Pongo.com, to keep their minds active and alert. The rest of the semester is going to include a series of building upon and adding to our skills. We welcome advice, sharing of ideas and comments that can be beneficial to our Rainforest students.