Another nice day in Room 240!

Instead of the normal Independent Reading Time in the morning, we had Extreme Makeover Home Edition come to our classroom – the kids got to finish roofing the gingerbread house in our room and decorate the outside of it as well. It turned out pretty nicely, we think. There was no shortage of ideas of types of candy to paste on the walls!

After that, we had Morning Meeting, and we realized that we have been in school for 61 days already. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. After Morning Meeting, we continued our Story Study of the gingerbread man stories in Reader’s Workshop. Today we read The Gingerbread Boy, which we fun because it was set in an urban environment.

After that, by popular request, we sang Down By the Bay again (the kids just keep coming up with verses to sing, so what can I do? Then it was on to Writer’s Workshop, in which the kids worked on finding the story that they want to polish for the Writer’s Celebration next week. For the celebration, I will be recording the kids reading their stories digitally, and then burn a “Greatest Hits” album for each child to take home (with everyone’s story on it. It should be great fun (if you’re even a tiny bit tech-minded, or at least not tech-phobic, please send me an email [jake.knaus@mpls.k12.mn.us] – I’d love to have you come in and help out with the recording next week).

Then it was down to the cafeteria for lunch, out to recess, and back up to the room for Read Aloud. After that, we went up to the music room for class with Mr. Hofmann.

When we got back down to the room, we had Math Workshop. Today we were working again on the combinations that add to ten.

After Math, we had a quick Science Lab – we looked at the worm bin again to see how much of the scraps form the Stone Soup preparation day the worms have already eaten. As it turns out, they have eaten quite a bit – they are small, but hungry!

When Science Lab was done, we had Friday Fun, during which most of the kids got back to decorating the gingerbread house. It is now, I am happy to report, equipped with an oven (for cooking gingerbread people), a mailbox, and several sign that strictly limit the house to an occupancy of two.

We then cleaned up, packed up, and headed out!

Enjoy your weekend!