Writer's Workshop Update

The children have been writing like real authors for the last few weeks.  Some are telling stories using pictures and labels and some are telling their stories using pictures with words underneath.  The children spend most afternoons in writer's workshop. Throughout the last few weeks, the children have learned that:

*writers choose topics and write what they know about, 

*writers first think of a topic, envision it, and then draw it

*writers know that when they are finished, they have more to do

*writers go back and add more detail

*writers take care of their tools

*writers draw even hard to make ideas

*writers write words,

*writers stretch the words

*writers listen for the sounds in a word and record these, 

*writers reread the written words, 

*writers can use alphabet charts and word books and 

*writers say, "I'll do the best I can and keep going."

What is your child writing about? What is your child working on in their writing?

Some students are also working on using periods, spaces, upper case letters at the beginning of sentences, and drawing more detailed pictures. 

Thank You Bo!

On Friday, Kelley-D's dad, Bo, visited and taught us how to make our own t-shirts.  To culminate our apple unit, Bo created an apple stencil to use as a design.  Kelley-D and Bo showed us how to stretch out our t-shirts, place the stencil down on the shirt and lay out the frame.  We then learned how to place the ink on the shirt and squeegee across the frame to print the apple and union design.  After the screen was lifted, Wala!  Thank you Kelley-D and Bo for showing us the process and allowing us all to make our own t-shirts!

Pumpkin Day with our Buddies!

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This morning our third grade buddies came down for some Pumpkin Fun. The children measured and weighed their pumpkins, observed whether their pumpkins floated, balanced pumpkins on their heads, counted the ribs, and played a game of bowling using their pumpkins as balls. The 3rd graders also read pumpkin stories to their Kindergartener friends and we all listened to a story about Perky the Pumpkin and Kate the Cat while making a house for them that surprisingly turned into a jack-o-lantern!

Thank You!

Miss Closter's Preschool and 2nd grade teachers from RI have graciously sent us new books for our classroom. Thank you Mrs. Michel and Mrs. Hart! 

Dave Keller Sing-Along #2

Thanks Dave..and Mrs. F!

Our own representation of Cezanne's "Apples and Oranges."

Invitations and Party Discussions

If you are having a birthday or holiday celebration, please send invitations on your own, not through school, unless all students from our class are invited.  Please also discuss the potential conversations that could come about from having out of school gatherings with only select classmates and the feelings that those left out may have.  I will be doing the same at school, but believe a follow up discussion can only benefit!  Thanks so much for understanding.

Fundraising Event for NAP

On Tuesday, November 9th, 8 p.m.: The Savoy Theater will host a benefit screening of PLAY AGAIN, a new documentary film exploring the consequences of a childhood removed from nature. The film will be followed by facilitated discussion about this disconnect from nature in our own community. Tickets can be purchased in advance from the North Branch Nature Center. Please call the nature center at 229-6206 to reserve your seats. Tickets will also be available at the door. Proceeds from the evening will benefit the Nature Adventure Program for all kindergarten and 1st grade classes at Union Elementary School.

Can You Help?

Kelley D's father, Bo Muller-Moore, has volunteered to bring his T-shirt making equipment to our classroom.  On Friday, Kelley D is going to teach us individually how to use silk screen printing as we create a shirt of our own to culminate our apple unit.  Each child will bring home a hand-made t-shirt of their own. If you'd like to help us out in this wonderful opportunity, please send in $5 to help defray the costs of the t-shirts.  If you'd like to send in $ to help a classmate, please do.  This contribution is optional, and your child will still receive a t-shirt regardless.  Thanks for considering!

4 Winds- Leaves

Thanks again to Sigrid and Shannon for coming in to share with us their expertise.  Today, our 4 Winds teachers looked in depth at leaves.  We used a scientific tool, magnifying glasses, to observe how leaves vary in appearance and texture.  The children went outside and collected leaves that were bigger and smaller than our hands, leaves that had smooth, jagged, and toothed edges, leaves of a variety of colors, leaves that were rough, flimsy, and soft, and leaves that had been eaten by someone.  Our class also shared their appreciation for leaves, while thanking these green plants for their favorite food.  As a culminating activity, we hunted for leaves as we did full table colorful leaf rubbings.  We were able to see the different veins in each leaf as we unraveled the mysteries under the paper.

Patterns Galore!

Aligning with our KinderArt study, we have been focusing on shapes during Math. We have looked closely at circles, squares, and triangles finding them around the room, in magazines, and in Cezannes painting. We used words to describe the different characteristics each shape exhibits as we looked with our eyes at drawings and felt the shapes in sock feely buckets.  We even compared these shapes to 3 dimensional objects-cubes, spheres, triangular prisms, cylinders, and cones.  The children also used these shapes to make a variety of patterns using sponges and paint and cut out shapes.  They even learned to label their patterns using letters. Ask your child what an A,B,B,A pattern would look like.

Today, we used our sense of sight to notice many patterns in a quilt created by Mrs. F's mom.  We learned how to describe patterns that were located horizontally, vertically, and diagonally across the quilt.   We then created quilt squares to make a community quilt and will look at this more closely tomorrow.  Today, the children noticed that 2 triangles can be put together to form a square. Check out our class quilt below!

KinderArt Study

We kicked off our first KinderArt study last week, learning about Paul Cezanne's Apples and Oranges impressionist painting. The purpose of our year-long KinderArt program is to engage children in looking closely - taking their time to notice details such as shapes, colors, design, perspective, texture and ideas through art created by some of the world's most famous artists. These skills are critical in all areas of lifelong learning, including the main focus of our curriculum science, math and literacy. So far, we have re-created Cezanne's Apples and Oranges still life in our classroom, made community paper for apple and orange cutouts, and looked closely at apples while sketching then using oil pastels.  We will be doing some more sketching this week and working on our own "Apples and Oranges" creations.  Like Cezanne, we are learning how to "look closely".  Ask your child what they know about Paul Cezanne and what they have noticed in his painting.  

Thank You and Sorry!

Thank you all for taking time out of your schedules to come in the last 2 weeks for conferences. I strongly believe good communication between families and school is important. Parents know so much about their children that it is imperative that they are involved in their education.  It was great to meet with everybody, share your children's success thus far in the year, and reflect on the first 6 weeks.  In addition, I apologize for getting a bit behind on the blog during these last few weeks of doing conferences. Thanks for understanding.  

Thank You!

I created this slideshow for our all school assembly tomorrow morning that I thought you'd be interested in watching.  The Kindergardeners and First Graders are leading the assembly, thanking the many sponsors who have donated clothes to outfit kids for NAP.  Andrew and Autumn will hold up a poster created by our class along with the letter K.  Each class will do the same and together spell, "Thank You!"  During the assembly, we will sing, "The Earth is our Mother."

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A and C

Our letter focus this week was on A and C. We learned that A was a vowel and we make its sound using our vocal tract and there is no closure of our throat or mouth.  Everybody practiced this sound, waiting for the hand motion to know when to stop. We compared this sound to that made by the C.  We noticed that when we make this sound, the air is stopped. We are learning to "clip" these sounds.  We practiced forming these letters the "kindergarten way" and used highlighters to find words in a riddle that began with A and C.  We also sang a C letter song to the tune of, "Do Your Ears Hang Low?"

Throughout the week we have been focusing on the sight word, like.  We practiced tapping this word on our arms, rainbow writing it over and over, using wikki sticks to construct the word, and finding it every day in our morning message.  

Symbolic Butterfly

Earlier this week we sent a symbolic monarch, made from paper, to some schoolchildren in Mexico.  We will be tracking its journey here at school.  We learned a few Spanish phrases and wrote notes on the butterfly in Spanish.  If you'd like to learn more about this project and or follow the migration at home, check out the website.  http://www.learner.org/jnorth/sm/

Big Buddies

  

We spent the morning getting to know the members of our buddy class.  Mrs. Slesar's third graders will be spending time with our class throughout the year. We plan on getting together on Fridays (when we don't have NAP) and doing a variety of projects together.  These friends will become role models for the Kindergardeners, helping them to become respectful members of our school community.  The third graders interviewed us and we asked them questions in return. We then played, "Just Like Me," and learned what we all had in common.  Following these get together activities, we used oil pastels to draw portraits of each other. We look forward to learning more from these "big buddies."  Ask your child who their buddy was!

Meet "Bubbles" our class betta fish.  Thanks to Autumn for taking its picture!  Its name was chosen after winning the vote over Bob, Louie, and Bluey.

NAP

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It turned out to be a beautiful morning for NAP.  We used our fox feet to be safe, our eagle eyes to see turkey volchers flying above, and our deer ears to listen to each other and the sounds of animal life in the forest.  We played a whole class game, pretending to be flying squirrels, owls, and fisher cats.  As we explored the forest floor, we gathered and noticed things of different colors.  Each group brought back items of either orange, brown, green, or yellow.  Some items will be displayed on our science table back in the classroom.

Snack Fairy Note

THERE IS NO LONGER FRUIT CUP AVAILABLE FOR SNACK. PLEASE NOTE THIS WHEN ORDERING SNACK AND MAKE ANOTHER CHOICE, PLEASE!

"Sunday, Chicken; Monday, Peanut Butter; Tuesday, Snap Peas....."

At math during the first few weeks, we did a lot of exploration with different math manipulatives that will be used throughout the year.  We have now started using these manipulatives (unifix cubes, pattern blocks, dice, attribute tiles, dominoes, counters, money, math hands, etc) to count objects with one to one correspondence, sort materials into different sets, and create AB, ABA, ABBA, AABB patterns.  We have also been practicing reading and writing numerals through 10, making pictographs and answering questions about them, and learning the days and months of the year.  Ask your child to share one of our many days of the week songs.  (I'm gonna catch you, Today is Monday, or Days of the Week to the tune of adams family).

                           

Have you heard about Echo?

b, bat, /b/
f, fun, /f/
m, man, /m/
n, nut, /n/

You may have been hearing these letters, keywords, and sounds heard around your house over the last few weeks. We have started reviewing letters and the corresponding sounds they make.  I use an owl puppet, named Echo, to encourage students to model me and repeat the sounds.  They have also been practicing a hand motion to make when producing each sound.  Along with learning each letter and sound, the students are learning how to correctly form each letter, upper and lower case.  They do this through sky, rug, and palm writing as well as practicing each letter on dry erase boards and using paper and pencils.  Sky writing helps maximize the gross motor learning.  During this time, we are also singing songs for each letter of the alphabet, reading letter books, and sorting objects based on beginning sounds.

Apple Tarts

We finally found time to do some baking this week.  On Tuesday, we made individual apple tarts.  We peeled our own apples using the fancy apple contraption and diced them up by ourselves!  Each student rolled out their dough and placed it in a muffin tin.  After tossing the apples in cinnamon and sugar, they poured the mix into the dough cup.  The children thoroughly enjoyed the leftover apple mixture so I opted to save the tarts for today.  This afternoon, we all enjoyed eating our creations.  What excellent chefs I have in my classroom!  I was extremely impressed with their ability to follow many multi step directions in the process.

4 Winds

Each month a few parent volunteers will be coming into our classroom to lead an interactive science lesson.  4 Winds is a state wide hands on ature program.  This year's theme is patterns in nature.  Thanks to Emannuelle for helping Shannon and Sigrid get acclimated with the materials and routines.  Our volunteers began the morning with an entertaining puppet show where the students learned the difference between spiders and insects.  Everybody then have the opportunity to experience how web-building spiders use their sense of touch to find their prey and capture dinner in their webs.  The students also put together a puzzle of a spider's body and learned that spiders have two main body parts: the cephalothorax and the abdomen and have eight legs that come out of the cephalothorax.  They were amazed to discover that spiders can have up to eight eyes, but they cannot see very well!  The kids were also able to observe real spiders up close!

PICTURE DAY TOMORROW!

Wear a nice top, comb your hair, and practice that smile in preparation for school pictures tomorrow!