We had our second safety drill. A few months ago we did our first safety drill and practiced hiding in our classroom.
Today, we practiced another ALICE drill. ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.
We read our ALICE book, again.
This time, our ALICE drill was about confusing any potential intruder. We talked about how it is a good idea to confuse an intruder by throwing things, running in zig-zag in the classroom, and yelling.
We colored an activity sheet to remind us about things we could grab and throw.
Then, we wadded up our coloring sheets. Later that day we practiced throwing things at a pretend "intruder" while running in zig-zags and yelling to confuse our pretend intruder.
Room 408 did a good job staying calm and following directions!
We started our personal practice math tubs.
These tubs are filled with activities to work on our math fluency. We are particularly loving our number rolls and playing "Guess My Number" with a partner.
We will keep adding activities to our personal practice math tubs through the end of the year!
We started a new unit in reading workshop called Word Detectives. We are doing training missions to help us earn our word detective badges.
One of our first missions was looking closely across a tricky word. A strategy that helped us a lot was writing the tricky word. Often this made us notice parts of the word that we already knew.
We also had a mission to think about what makes a good reading partner. After brainstorming our ideas, we practiced them with our reading partner. A big one we're learning is to teach our partner when we get to a tricky word, not just tell them the word. We are all helping our partner's brains grow!
Lincoln & Maddin, using *everything* they know about solving tricky words.
We have been reading Little House on the Prairie during our Snack/Read Aloud time.
The Ingalls family traveled all the way from the big woods of Wisconsin to a homestead near Independence, Kansas.
We have gotten to one of my favorite parts of the book, which is when Pa builds their log cabin.
Undoubtedly at this point in the book after seeing the above picture, one of the kids makes a connection about Lincoln Logs.
I pulled out the Lincoln Logs from our storage room and the kids started building and exploring.
Here is a picture of the re-creation of Little House on the Prairie in Kansas, near Independence.
Next, I introduced them to a movie about a man named Dick Proenneke.
He was a man who decided to test himself to see if he could live off the land, all alone in Alaska. He built a cabin from scratch, using only hand tools--he brought the steel parts of the tools, but even built the handles of the tools with local wood. We learned that he was a mathematician when he measured and constructed the cabin, as well as a writer because he recorded his life and experiences in journals.
Today we got to see him building his cabin in the documentary Alone in the Wilderness.
The kids were in awe as we watched him chop and saw, carry tree trunks, construct his log cabin, build a fireplace, make furniture...just like Pa in Little House on the Prairie!
To learn more about Dick Proenneke and his adventures in the Alaskan Wilderness:
