Pattern Block Mandalas

 Since the start of the school year the children have been coloring mandalas each morning during check-in and arrival time.  They have also been building, sorting, and designing with pattern blocks- mostly during Math time.  This week they put these two ideas together and were completely excited about the results!  Have a look:

Making Connections to Characters and Books

 This week we began an author study of the author/illustrator Leo Lionni.  If you haven't heard of him he's probably most famous for his book Swimmy, which won a Caldecott MANY years ago.  I love to teach with LL's books because they deal with important themes like friendship, individuality, the power of words, and the beauty of nature in ways that children can easily understand. After reading his book, A Color of His Own the children created paintings that showed how a chameleon could change color on different objects.

Over the next few weeks I'll post more about our learning with Leo Lionni's books.  

On Friday afternoon we needed to quickly adjust to the rain that prevented us from building with natural materials out in the courtyard as we have done in the past.  So, we utilized a surprise basket full of colorful bits of nature (flower petals, dried grasses, dried flowers, small sticks, etc.) AND sparkly marbles that we called "a little magic touch", to build incredible "small worlds" right in our room!  Take a look and also, take a guess as to who may have left the surprise basket...the children think they know!

We Are In Community

 The title of this post takes it's name from a line in the Orchard School Song. Did you  know we have one?  We sing it at our all school morning meetings every other Friday!  Here are a little bit of the lyrics:

"Here we are /altogether / we are in community / we are one, here at Orchard / altogether in unity"

So lets start in our room- the classroom community!  Here's a look at our new rug.

Moving outside to the courtyard... we like to think we share this space with the Fairies!  Here you can see us building enchanted, small places to attract fairies (some children even left notes) and also helping out by pulling up old sunflowers because it's the end of the season.

Moving out from our "epicenter", this week we had our first Farm to School Session.  Carol McQuillen (former Orchard teacher and current director of Common Roots) and her team deliver carefully planned, hands-on lessons about nutrition and nourishment from the farm. Here are some pictures of our crew doing Apple Yoga, reading an apple story, and chopping and pounding to make apple butter!

And now for the Fun Run- where the community joined US and we're all doing our part to raise our spirits, our fitness, and our funds for Orchard!  Here is a little time line from start to finish.

Learning with Nature IN doors and OUT

 There's a lot of research out there that supports the power of nature to help us relax and feel a part of our surroundings. I think children AND grown ups feel this intuitively as well. With the addition of some collections that families have sent in, the children are creating some magnificent nature constructions and designs.

On Friday we took to the outdoors to search for Signs of Fall.  If you read the previous post you can see how we began the day by predicting what we might find on the search. In the picture below the children are carrying checklists for keeping track as we looked for different color leaves, straw, a pumpkin, a squirrel scurrying, a scarecrow, wind, and more!

Routines In Our Room

It's 7:50 and the children start to filter into the room. After putting  things in their cubbies and making a lunch choice, each child stops by the Morning Message to have a go at the day's job.  Either myself or Ms.Finn is stationed nearby to read and talk it through before sending children to their table spot to complete their answer which they then bring back to tape up.

As you may know from the newsletter, we completed our first Math Menu cycle this past week!  Here is a look at the chart we used to help the class understand how to check off activities as they complete them.  

In addition to Math Menu which happens on several afternoons throughout the week, one typical mid-morning routine is doing a hands-on activity that reinforces a concept from a Literacy Mini-Lesson.  Here you can see us using cereal alphabet letters to spell names and snap words. This followed a lesson about letters coming together to make words.  You can also see us labeling the colors we mixed which followed a reading of Mouse Paint. We've added the color words to our word wall!

A less frequent routine for us is the bi-weekly All School Morning Meetings over Zoom.  This is an adaptation of what we used to do IN-PERSON in the gym every Friday morning.  Below you a can see our class paying closed attention to a student sharing about this month's Reading to Raise Anti-Racists' selection: Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins Bigelow

 

Poetry, Partners, Power (of Yet) and PJs!

 The title of this post says it all!  There is so much to share...

Our poetry journals are works-in-progress that won't come home until the end of the year. Almost every week we make an entry as a way of using our snap words as stepping stones for reading. Poems are also a fun way to use memory, rhyme, and our growing knowledge of letter sounds.  Here you can see the children incorporating science learning about sunflowers and seasonal change into their illustrations.

Partner games are a favorite way to promote math reasoning AND friendship skills.  

Partners can play games together AND make art together!

Some things are fun to do on your own.  Like use the teacher's pointer while you build and feel the Power of Yet. As the song says, "perseverance is paramount"!

After all this work and play, a little relaxing in our PJs was well deserved.  Congrats to the crew for filling our Core Values Chart for the second time.