Cultivating the Spirit of Giving

Thanks to the generosity of all the parents who helped organize and donate, we had a beautiful morning of crafting on Friday.  The children were engaged in making felt book marks, stuffing herb sachets, decorating picture frames, putting together calming jars, and assembling pine cone bird feeders. In the days leading up to the celebration we talked as a class about the joy we feel when GIVING gifts, especially ones we've made.  Everyone went home with a bag full of items to give if they wish or keep. And of course we had some delicious snack as well.

This was the crew listening to all the options!

Drawing with the Bee Bots

In the days leading up to the winter break it was challenging to stay focused on the present, but the children were certainly "drawn" (pun intended) to this fun twist on working with the programmable Bee Bots...we used them to draw!  By placing a specially made "jacket" with a marker holder over the bot, it could push and pull and marker to make lines on a page.  This took concentration but resulted in some really cool designs that were sent home in folders on Friday.  It also fostered some wonderful partnerships.

Gaining Confidence as Readers and Writers

Our work with "old favorites" continues and this week the children had fun dramatizing The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  We are learning that when we re-tell stories, remembering and even TRYING OUT the character's voices and help us know the story by heart.  Take a look at the children using popsicle stick puppets on self designed bridges to retell the classic tale.

In addition to listening and retelling stories, we are working hard on reading "just right" books and communicating our own ideas through writing.  Here you can see children getting to know a new strategy we call "WORD PART POWER".  That's when you use parts of a word you know to help you figure out a new word.  Word families demonstrate this clearly.  Below you can see children using flip rings and creating slide strips to reveal words with the same ending but different beginning letters.  Check it out-

Stories, Friends and Robots!

Our current focus in Reader's and Writer's Workshop is "Old Favorites"- stories that live in our hearts because they have stood the test of time.  To get us started we fell in love (some of us for the first time and others all-over-again) with Harry the Dirty Dog.  This classic is a model text for understanding the beginning, middle, end story structure.  Below you can see some students using the book to choose the moments they will illustrate to show the story's sequence.

As focused as the children are during work times, most days they are equally focused at Explore time!  Check out the team work knowing that as soon as these designs were created, I was asked to "post them on line"!

In keeping with how tech savvy this crew is, it's worth taking a look on the expressions on the children's faces as they were introduced to the Bee Bots (early programming and coding tool) by Ms. Courcelle.  You can see the intensity with which the children listened, experimented, and then celebrated their success.

Social / Emotional Learning - A Post From Ms. Allyson

         Throughout the year we have been working on Social Emotional Learning, which is a foundational part of education, when children learn how to self- regulate their emotions. We started this year off with learning about the “Zones of Regulation”, see below.

We teach different techniques to help the children calm their emotions to come back to the Green Zone, the ideal learning zone.

One of these techniques was described in a book titled, The Lemonade Hurricane By, Lucia Morelli. This is a book about a young boy who does not yet understand how his body and emotions affects other people. His sister teaches him how to sit, breathe and slow down. She teaches this by telling him to close his eyes and to imagine somewhere in the world that will help bring him peace.

Last Tuesday, all the children created drawings of their peaceful places to make this idea of imagining a place more tangible. This helped the children to imagine, see and, think of a peaceful place that helps their bodies to calm down. Now, when it comes time for us to do a short mediation, we can remind the children to think of their peaceful places and to breathe. Their peaceful place pages are now formed into a book and this is kept in the Peace Corner.

 See below for some action shots!

Gaining Confidence as Readers. Mathematicians and Embroiderers?

Yes!  It's true, this week the children added a new super power to their reading arsenal- Partner Power!  This power invokes the old adage, "two heads are better than one" as pairs of students support one another in looking at every word and utilize all their skills to read.  Have a look...

In Math this week the children stretched their understanding of shapes to include 3 Dimensional Shapes.  Below you can see us making spheres with playdough and learning to draw cubes and rectangular prisms.

Amidst all our work in Literacy and Math we are still making time for exploring history through some hands-on activities.  Below you can see classmates taking their time (and taking a break) from the precise work of embroidery.  Sewing and weaving have been a wonderful addition to our quiet time routine.

Progress in the Present AND Going Back in Time

It's been full steam ahead with learning as you will see in the pictures below.  This week the children challenged themselves with sight word recognition through a bingo game (not pictured), a reading lesson on "re-read" power, a Memory card game, and independent work on white boards- "words I know vs. words I'm working on".

It's also been a magical week of "time travel" taking us back to farm life in the 19th century.  Our guiding story for this unit is Donald Hall's The Ox Cart Man and as one way of bringing the story to life, we've added a pretend area with old fashioned props to our room. 

We've also been learning to weave on cardboard looms.  First, we enlisted our big buddies to help us get started and Mrs. Freeman showed us some of her handiwork on a similar wooden loom.  But once the children got started many of them were unstoppable!  Weaving has become a new pastime at both Quiet Time and Explore.  

A Not-So-Spooky Celebration

In this post I'm happy to share some photos from Thursday's Halloween Celebration. With lots of parent help we were able to get crafty making bats, ghosts and spiders.  We also had a great time making plates of festive snacks and playing Halloween Themed Bingo.  Before Thursday's celebration we embarked on a project that required every class member's contribution.  As a class we put everything we had learned about Alphabet Charts to good use creating one of our own with a Halloween Theme.  In the photo below you can see it propped up in the front of the room as a tool we could use for figuring out the letter sounds needed for labeling our Haunted Houses.  Mr. T stopped by that day to see us hard at work and note that letter P on our chart stood for "pale green pants" from a spooky story he read to our class!

What a Great Story Can Do...

This week the children were inspired by some of our favorite storybook characters- Frederick (from the self titled story by Leo Lionni), Rocket (the dog star of Tad Hills' books) and Mabel (our Phonics mascot) to create puppet versions of the characters and stage an impromptu performance.  As much fun was had in the making as was in the performing! This kind of creativity and and team work is what can come out of our afternoon Explore time. It's a super way to end our day.

Continuing with this idea of what the children are doing entirely on their own, these two pals had a super time connecting over mandalas and then extending that to other designs- check it out.

And then there are the parts of our day that are not student directed. Below you can see children engaged in activities designed to practice new skills- the recognition and ordering of teen numbers and the use of popcorn words in a sentence.  A careful look will reveal that the children are practicing the teen numbers through a card flipping game and their popcorn words are labeling the stages in the life cycle of a pumpkin.