Hello everyone!
Science:
We have had an awesome two weeks wrapping up our rainforest unit! We loved getting to go beyond the classroom to the Center of Puppetry Arts for our field trip… the Rainforest Adventure show was beautifully done. The auditorium was packed with school groups, so you might guess there was a lot of talking and whispering going on behind us (we arrived early enough to get seats in the front, yay!) but the adults in our group noted with proud amusement that when our students talked, it was to identify and recall facts about the animals appearing in the show… they even identified a factual error in the show! Mirah pointed out that the Emerald Tree Boa’s babies should have been red and orange, not green like their mama. Our little Scientists and Fact-Checkers are awesome!
We also had a fabulous time performing our Animal Extravaganza show for you! We hope you all enjoyed our songs, poetry, and artwork. We teachers were SO proud of our students! They worked very hard, and did an awesome job. See a video of the performance here! And please feel free to upload any cute photos to our Shutterfly account! We took the two below of the kids with their masks after the performance, but that was all the photo evidence we managed to get.
Computer Skills:
After dabbling in coding a big earlier this year for the “Hour of Code” event, Ms. Louderback and Mrs. K have been eager to explore coding further with our class! Coding is not only an awesome computer skill to begin exposing students to, but also utilizes concepts of sequencing and pattern, which are perfect logic and spatial skills for this developmental level. We were excited to have Ms. Johnson collaborate with us for a coding class this week, utilizing activities from Studio Code and an awesome coding skills board game called Robot Turtles. Big thanks to Mirah and her parents for donating Robot Turtles to our class! We will continue using these resources in our classroom during workstations over the next couple of weeks, and then will have another computer day with Ms. Johnson to teach further coding skills in March.
Literacy:
Practicing for our performance, computer lab sessions, and Writer’s Workshop have all been a focus during our literacy block over the last two weeks (there’s never enough time!). We are looking forward to starting new literacy workstations this coming week, when things have calmed down a bit!
The students are all working hard on their Writer’s Workshop “stories about our lives” – we love the increased confidence and attention to detail we have been seeing! Mrs. Zupancic has been collaborating with us on this as well, by reading and discussing “real life” type stories with the students when they come to the library for story time.
Math:
This week we have focused on skip counting, number patterns and making exchanges of pennies for nickels. We have also started looking at 3d shapes in small groups
We skip counted in 5’s and 10’s and looked for these number patterns on a 100 square. As we counted in 5’s and 10’s we circled the numbers and found that when we count in 5’s our numbers end in 5 and 0 and when we count in 10’s they end in 0!
Over the last few weeks we have been revisiting money and looking at pennies, nickels and dimes. We know that: pennies are brown and worth one cent; nickels are silver and worth five cents and dimes are silver and worth 10 cents. This week we introduced making exchanges, exchanging five pennies for one nickel. We will continue to do this next week and look more closely at money over the next few weeks.
Feel free to play shop at home ‘buying things’ in your house with pennies, nickels or dimes! Your children love playing with money!
Our Math Stations over the last week include:
In other news:
Happy birthday to Luke, who turned 6 this week! We had a great time celebrating with his parents and grandmothers. Happy birthday to Hunter too! His parents surprised him with a balloon and treat on playground… very fun!
Huge thanks to Ana’s mom Samantha, who taught us a fun lesson about the Chinese New Year, complete with authentic music, food, clothing, and props! Wow! Big thanks also to our Mystery Readers, Mason’s dad Eric and Naviyd’s mom Tameka! Thanks as well to our parent chaperones and drivers for the fieldtrip, Ella’s mom Hedy, Finley’s mom Sarah, Kol’s mom Jennifer, and Brody’s mom Ellie. Finally, thanks to Anna’s mom Hilary for making the students awesome “You Are a Star!” bookmarks to take home after the class performance. So thoughtful!
Whew! All those “thank yous” just go to show… we have the best class of parents ever! :D We really appreciate everything y’all do.
Science:
We have had an awesome two weeks wrapping up our rainforest unit! We loved getting to go beyond the classroom to the Center of Puppetry Arts for our field trip… the Rainforest Adventure show was beautifully done. The auditorium was packed with school groups, so you might guess there was a lot of talking and whispering going on behind us (we arrived early enough to get seats in the front, yay!) but the adults in our group noted with proud amusement that when our students talked, it was to identify and recall facts about the animals appearing in the show… they even identified a factual error in the show! Mirah pointed out that the Emerald Tree Boa’s babies should have been red and orange, not green like their mama. Our little Scientists and Fact-Checkers are awesome!
We also had a fabulous time performing our Animal Extravaganza show for you! We hope you all enjoyed our songs, poetry, and artwork. We teachers were SO proud of our students! They worked very hard, and did an awesome job. See a video of the performance here! And please feel free to upload any cute photos to our Shutterfly account! We took the two below of the kids with their masks after the performance, but that was all the photo evidence we managed to get.
Computer Skills:
After dabbling in coding a big earlier this year for the “Hour of Code” event, Ms. Louderback and Mrs. K have been eager to explore coding further with our class! Coding is not only an awesome computer skill to begin exposing students to, but also utilizes concepts of sequencing and pattern, which are perfect logic and spatial skills for this developmental level. We were excited to have Ms. Johnson collaborate with us for a coding class this week, utilizing activities from Studio Code and an awesome coding skills board game called Robot Turtles. Big thanks to Mirah and her parents for donating Robot Turtles to our class! We will continue using these resources in our classroom during workstations over the next couple of weeks, and then will have another computer day with Ms. Johnson to teach further coding skills in March.
Literacy:
Practicing for our performance, computer lab sessions, and Writer’s Workshop have all been a focus during our literacy block over the last two weeks (there’s never enough time!). We are looking forward to starting new literacy workstations this coming week, when things have calmed down a bit!
The students are all working hard on their Writer’s Workshop “stories about our lives” – we love the increased confidence and attention to detail we have been seeing! Mrs. Zupancic has been collaborating with us on this as well, by reading and discussing “real life” type stories with the students when they come to the library for story time.
Math:
This week we have focused on skip counting, number patterns and making exchanges of pennies for nickels. We have also started looking at 3d shapes in small groups
We skip counted in 5’s and 10’s and looked for these number patterns on a 100 square. As we counted in 5’s and 10’s we circled the numbers and found that when we count in 5’s our numbers end in 5 and 0 and when we count in 10’s they end in 0!
Over the last few weeks we have been revisiting money and looking at pennies, nickels and dimes. We know that: pennies are brown and worth one cent; nickels are silver and worth five cents and dimes are silver and worth 10 cents. This week we introduced making exchanges, exchanging five pennies for one nickel. We will continue to do this next week and look more closely at money over the next few weeks.
Feel free to play shop at home ‘buying things’ in your house with pennies, nickels or dimes! Your children love playing with money!
Our Math Stations over the last week include:
- Pick a 3d shape with Mrs K - where the children were introduced to 3d shapes and then closed their eyes and picked shapes out of a box, guessing which shape they had picked
- Building with pattern blocks - where you build your own creation with pattern blocks such as flowers or dogs and record the pattern blocks used
- Spill a nickel - where you place 3 nickels in a cup shake and spill! You then record how many times they land on heads or tails using tally marks!
- Place value puzzles - where the children put together puzzles matching ten sticks and one cubes to digits
- Measuring Station- where the children used rulers to measure a range of things around the classroom
- Find a number - where the children put their hands in a container of beads and pull out a stone with a number on it, recording the number they found on a 100 square
- Number memory - where the children turned cards that had stickers on them and tried to match them with the right digit cards
- ipads - this week we got to choose between the Math Vs. Zombies app, a visual/spatial problem solving app, and an addition story problem app.
In other news:
Happy birthday to Luke, who turned 6 this week! We had a great time celebrating with his parents and grandmothers. Happy birthday to Hunter too! His parents surprised him with a balloon and treat on playground… very fun!
Huge thanks to Ana’s mom Samantha, who taught us a fun lesson about the Chinese New Year, complete with authentic music, food, clothing, and props! Wow! Big thanks also to our Mystery Readers, Mason’s dad Eric and Naviyd’s mom Tameka! Thanks as well to our parent chaperones and drivers for the fieldtrip, Ella’s mom Hedy, Finley’s mom Sarah, Kol’s mom Jennifer, and Brody’s mom Ellie. Finally, thanks to Anna’s mom Hilary for making the students awesome “You Are a Star!” bookmarks to take home after the class performance. So thoughtful!
Whew! All those “thank yous” just go to show… we have the best class of parents ever! :D We really appreciate everything y’all do.