We enjoyed meeting with all of y’all last week for conferences! We hope it was a helpful opportunity to discuss your child’s kindergarten journey so far. If you have had any questions or thoughts arise since our meeting, please follow-up to let us know! We always are happy to hear from you. :)
Here is a recap of the last week and a half…
Beyond the Classroom:
As part of the Happening last week, we had a great time learning about one of Mirah’s favorite strategy board games, “The Three Little Pigs” from her and her dad! Big thanks to Jeff Lindsay for coming in to teach us the rules and play the game with us – the game was a popular option during Creative Explorations for more than a week! The kids have been enjoying having the role of teacher – in addition to Mirah teaching that game, Kol taught his peers the rules of “Animal Safari” (another board game from Great Britain), Beckett P. is teaching classmates how to play “Richard Scary’s Busytown,” and Mason is teaching peers to play “Shoots and Ladders.” If your child has a favorite game at home that he or she would like to bring in and share during Creative Explorations, we would love to keep the game trend rolling! It is a great way to provide students with a chance to practice leadership, sequential thinking, and verbal skills, all in a cooperative, play-oriented setting.
Last week ended the Happening with a rousing dominos rally in the gym with all of Early Learning. The event was a great opportunity for organic, unstructured collaboration with peers, and was a lot of fun. Check out Shutterfly for photos!
Science:
We launched a new unit this week, studying the human body! We will continue this short (but rich!) exploration over the course of next week as well.
We opened our unit by learning the “college word” anatomy (ask your child to tell you what it means!) and creating a “Know / Want to Know” chart, brainstorming all the body information and vocabulary that the students already knew, and then asking them what questions they have about bodies as well. The students had really fun and interesting questions, ranging from, “Why do we have fingernails?” to “My mom says our brains stop growing when we get big, and that is crazy, why do our brains stop growing?” We are looking forward to discovering all of the answers to our questions by the end of the unit!
The brain is our first stop on our exploration of anatomy, and we began with one of Harvard’s Project Zero thinking routines, called, “See, Think, Wonder.” This was our class’ first exposure to this thinking routine this year, but we will use it frequently in our science studies going forward. In this routine, the students begin by viewing an image that is likely unfamiliar to them – in this case, this photo of human brain cells magnified by an electron microscope. The students were given a quiet period of about a minute to examine the photo and think about what they saw, without speaking. Then, we went around and discussed the students’ thoughts and what they had noticed. The students told us that the photo looked like plant or tree roots, like a spider’s web, like “germs close up” (we looked a photos of bacteria under an electron microscope earlier this year), and like the stringy insides of a pumpkin. Then, we talked about what the students wondered about the photo. The students wondered what the larger clumps in the photo were (pumpkin seeds? A spider’s dinner all wrapped up web?), and about whether the picture was taken at night, since there were spots of black in the background that looked like darkness.
After the students finished seeing, thinking, and wondering, we revealed what the photo showed, and we realized that our students’ detectives’ skills had already discovered a great deal about brain cells that was perfectly true! Brain cells are a little like a web, since they are all interconnected and can send messages to one another, sort of the way a spider’s web vibrates to send the spider the message that dinner has arrived. The child who thought it looked like “germs close up” also had “detected” something about the photo… the fact that it was something tiny being viewed at great magnification. Even the child who wondered whether the photo was taken at night had discovered an interesting fact… as the class all agreed, with no windows and no light bulbs within the human brain, it likely is quite dark in there. At that moment, another child made a great connection with our 5 senses unit earlier in the year, pointing out that light only gets into our bodies through our eyes. From there, we discussed the messages constantly being sent to our brains from our 5 senses… messages regarding what we are seeing, hearing, touch, feeling, and smelling.
Later in the week, we also discussed how the brain stem controls body functions like breathing and our heartbeat, and how the cerebrum controls conscious movement, feelings, and processing sensations. We got to explore a life-size model of a brain, and examined pictures of the human brain and nervous system in a huge Human Body book Ms. Stinson let us borrow as well. We also got to read the body books My Body, and More Parts with Ms. Zupancic during library reading time. Super cool!
As you can see, we are having many fascinating conversations and discovering lots of new things about how our bodies work! Ask your child… how quickly does the brain send and receive messages? (the answer is around 170 miles per hour, though your student might simply answer along the lines of, “faster than a car can drive on the highway”). You can also ask your child what the surface of the brain is like, smooth or bumpy, and where his or her cerebrum and brain stem are located.
Literacy:
This week we reviewed the letter “r” and learned the sight word “go.” We also continued working hard learning how to hear and “tap out” all the sounds in three-letter, consonant/vowel/consonant words. We finished our current rotation of literacy workstations, which included:
· Listening and responding to the audiobook Bucket Filling from A-Z (thank you so much to Andrea Spear, for purchasing this for our class off of our Scholastic Read Club wish-list!)
· Working with Ms. Louderback, building reading skills and comprehension at each child’s level of readiness
· Searching for letters and matching them to beginning sounds in an I-Spy magnifying glass activity
· Practicing letter formation and handwriting with Mrs. K
· Practicing literacy skills through learning games on the iPad
· Making a construction paper “dog” craft for the letter “d”
· Playing a game involving recognizing sandpaper letters based only on “feel” while blindfolded
· Creating a “feelie hand” out of construction paper, feathers, sequins, aluminum foil, and cotton balls, wrapping up our recent study of the sense of touch
· Working on our Writer’s Workshop “teaching books”
· Visiting the library to check out books
New literacy workstations coming next week!
Math:
We had a ton of active fun in Math this week! We started out the week with a focus on counting to 20 and recognizing teen numbers and beyond by making our own human number line outside. Everyone was given an apron with teen numbers going into the 20’s and after clapping out the amount for some of our numbers we made our own number line. We were super impressed with how quickly the children managed to find their space in the line.
We continued the focus on teen numbers with the introduction of the concept that teen numbers represent 10 and some more. We discovered that we need a friend in order to represent teen numbers with our hands, the children working in pairs to do so.
The rest of the week saw an introduction to symmetry and estimation. We learnt that for something to be symmetrical it has to be the same on both sides in color size and position. The children made their own symmetrical shapes outside using skipping ropes and large pick up sticks and helped each other see when something wasn’t quite symmetrical. We also started making our own symmetrical shapes using pipe cleaners and beads, you can see the pictures of some of these on our shutterfly site.
Our Learning detectives were amazing at estimating. When asked to estimate the number of stones in the jar their estimates were only out by one or two!
In other news:
This week we also got to meet our Big Buddies, older students from Middle and Upper Learning! Our class got to teach their Big Buddies how to play horseshoes, pick-up sticks, and the Nigerian game "Jump the Beanbag," and also had a chance to sit down and talk about each other's lives while filling out a "get to know you!" page together. Your child should have come home with this page, and we have posted lots of great photos on Shutterfly as well! We love enjoying the mentorship of the Big Buddies, and look forward to getting to know them better as the year progresses.
Big thanks to Brody's dad Todd, and Luke's grandma Jean, for being our Mystery Readers over the last two weeks! Also big thanks to Beckett E.'s mom Tiffany, for supervising a giant game of Pick-Up Sticks last Wednesday. We really love our parent volunteers, and appreciate your time very much. Also, happy birthday to Marni, who turned 6 last week! We had a great time reading, and sharing a yummy fruit and cookie snack, with her and her parents.
Here is a recap of the last week and a half…
Beyond the Classroom:
As part of the Happening last week, we had a great time learning about one of Mirah’s favorite strategy board games, “The Three Little Pigs” from her and her dad! Big thanks to Jeff Lindsay for coming in to teach us the rules and play the game with us – the game was a popular option during Creative Explorations for more than a week! The kids have been enjoying having the role of teacher – in addition to Mirah teaching that game, Kol taught his peers the rules of “Animal Safari” (another board game from Great Britain), Beckett P. is teaching classmates how to play “Richard Scary’s Busytown,” and Mason is teaching peers to play “Shoots and Ladders.” If your child has a favorite game at home that he or she would like to bring in and share during Creative Explorations, we would love to keep the game trend rolling! It is a great way to provide students with a chance to practice leadership, sequential thinking, and verbal skills, all in a cooperative, play-oriented setting.
Last week ended the Happening with a rousing dominos rally in the gym with all of Early Learning. The event was a great opportunity for organic, unstructured collaboration with peers, and was a lot of fun. Check out Shutterfly for photos!
Science:
We launched a new unit this week, studying the human body! We will continue this short (but rich!) exploration over the course of next week as well.
We opened our unit by learning the “college word” anatomy (ask your child to tell you what it means!) and creating a “Know / Want to Know” chart, brainstorming all the body information and vocabulary that the students already knew, and then asking them what questions they have about bodies as well. The students had really fun and interesting questions, ranging from, “Why do we have fingernails?” to “My mom says our brains stop growing when we get big, and that is crazy, why do our brains stop growing?” We are looking forward to discovering all of the answers to our questions by the end of the unit!
The brain is our first stop on our exploration of anatomy, and we began with one of Harvard’s Project Zero thinking routines, called, “See, Think, Wonder.” This was our class’ first exposure to this thinking routine this year, but we will use it frequently in our science studies going forward. In this routine, the students begin by viewing an image that is likely unfamiliar to them – in this case, this photo of human brain cells magnified by an electron microscope. The students were given a quiet period of about a minute to examine the photo and think about what they saw, without speaking. Then, we went around and discussed the students’ thoughts and what they had noticed. The students told us that the photo looked like plant or tree roots, like a spider’s web, like “germs close up” (we looked a photos of bacteria under an electron microscope earlier this year), and like the stringy insides of a pumpkin. Then, we talked about what the students wondered about the photo. The students wondered what the larger clumps in the photo were (pumpkin seeds? A spider’s dinner all wrapped up web?), and about whether the picture was taken at night, since there were spots of black in the background that looked like darkness.
After the students finished seeing, thinking, and wondering, we revealed what the photo showed, and we realized that our students’ detectives’ skills had already discovered a great deal about brain cells that was perfectly true! Brain cells are a little like a web, since they are all interconnected and can send messages to one another, sort of the way a spider’s web vibrates to send the spider the message that dinner has arrived. The child who thought it looked like “germs close up” also had “detected” something about the photo… the fact that it was something tiny being viewed at great magnification. Even the child who wondered whether the photo was taken at night had discovered an interesting fact… as the class all agreed, with no windows and no light bulbs within the human brain, it likely is quite dark in there. At that moment, another child made a great connection with our 5 senses unit earlier in the year, pointing out that light only gets into our bodies through our eyes. From there, we discussed the messages constantly being sent to our brains from our 5 senses… messages regarding what we are seeing, hearing, touch, feeling, and smelling.
Later in the week, we also discussed how the brain stem controls body functions like breathing and our heartbeat, and how the cerebrum controls conscious movement, feelings, and processing sensations. We got to explore a life-size model of a brain, and examined pictures of the human brain and nervous system in a huge Human Body book Ms. Stinson let us borrow as well. We also got to read the body books My Body, and More Parts with Ms. Zupancic during library reading time. Super cool!
As you can see, we are having many fascinating conversations and discovering lots of new things about how our bodies work! Ask your child… how quickly does the brain send and receive messages? (the answer is around 170 miles per hour, though your student might simply answer along the lines of, “faster than a car can drive on the highway”). You can also ask your child what the surface of the brain is like, smooth or bumpy, and where his or her cerebrum and brain stem are located.
Literacy:
This week we reviewed the letter “r” and learned the sight word “go.” We also continued working hard learning how to hear and “tap out” all the sounds in three-letter, consonant/vowel/consonant words. We finished our current rotation of literacy workstations, which included:
· Listening and responding to the audiobook Bucket Filling from A-Z (thank you so much to Andrea Spear, for purchasing this for our class off of our Scholastic Read Club wish-list!)
· Working with Ms. Louderback, building reading skills and comprehension at each child’s level of readiness
· Searching for letters and matching them to beginning sounds in an I-Spy magnifying glass activity
· Practicing letter formation and handwriting with Mrs. K
· Practicing literacy skills through learning games on the iPad
· Making a construction paper “dog” craft for the letter “d”
· Playing a game involving recognizing sandpaper letters based only on “feel” while blindfolded
· Creating a “feelie hand” out of construction paper, feathers, sequins, aluminum foil, and cotton balls, wrapping up our recent study of the sense of touch
· Working on our Writer’s Workshop “teaching books”
· Visiting the library to check out books
New literacy workstations coming next week!
Math:
We had a ton of active fun in Math this week! We started out the week with a focus on counting to 20 and recognizing teen numbers and beyond by making our own human number line outside. Everyone was given an apron with teen numbers going into the 20’s and after clapping out the amount for some of our numbers we made our own number line. We were super impressed with how quickly the children managed to find their space in the line.
We continued the focus on teen numbers with the introduction of the concept that teen numbers represent 10 and some more. We discovered that we need a friend in order to represent teen numbers with our hands, the children working in pairs to do so.
The rest of the week saw an introduction to symmetry and estimation. We learnt that for something to be symmetrical it has to be the same on both sides in color size and position. The children made their own symmetrical shapes outside using skipping ropes and large pick up sticks and helped each other see when something wasn’t quite symmetrical. We also started making our own symmetrical shapes using pipe cleaners and beads, you can see the pictures of some of these on our shutterfly site.
Our Learning detectives were amazing at estimating. When asked to estimate the number of stones in the jar their estimates were only out by one or two!
In other news:
This week we also got to meet our Big Buddies, older students from Middle and Upper Learning! Our class got to teach their Big Buddies how to play horseshoes, pick-up sticks, and the Nigerian game "Jump the Beanbag," and also had a chance to sit down and talk about each other's lives while filling out a "get to know you!" page together. Your child should have come home with this page, and we have posted lots of great photos on Shutterfly as well! We love enjoying the mentorship of the Big Buddies, and look forward to getting to know them better as the year progresses.
Big thanks to Brody's dad Todd, and Luke's grandma Jean, for being our Mystery Readers over the last two weeks! Also big thanks to Beckett E.'s mom Tiffany, for supervising a giant game of Pick-Up Sticks last Wednesday. We really love our parent volunteers, and appreciate your time very much. Also, happy birthday to Marni, who turned 6 last week! We had a great time reading, and sharing a yummy fruit and cookie snack, with her and her parents.