Happy New Year!
It was wonderful to have our class back together again!  I missed them all over the holiday break!  
Our first week back was a smooth start.  We celebrated the new year by making "Happy New Year" hats, visiting the office and our third grade buddies to wish them a happy new year and took funny photos in our New Year's photo booth. We wrote four goals for the new year and water colored a picture of our favorite goal.  Most of the class picked to draw and paint a picture of what they want to do for fun this year.  
We have begun to tally the books that were read during break. We have twelve students who have brought back their reading logs and have read over 200 books!  Students are encouraged to bring in the reading logs if they have not already, and we will continue to read and record their reading logs all year.  It is a great way to encourage reading, and we get to count by fives, and tens when we are adding up all of the books that have been read.
We read The Mitten by Jan Brett and The Mitten by Alvin Tresselt. We compared the two stories with their similarities and differences using a Venn Diagram.  We colored and cut out the animals from the stories and will use them to retell the story to our reading buddies. We matched and colored mittens so they were symmetrical. 
Next week we will practice retelling The Mitten. We will be reading and comparing different versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  

Important dates to remember...

Jan 19 - Martin Luther King Jr. Day - No School
Jan 21 - Late Start Wednesday 
Jan 30 - Teacher Planning Day