Social Studies:
This month we are doing a social studies unit, studying fall and winter holidays around the world. We started off learning about Diwali, and will also study Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas as it is celebrated in Sweden and Mexico. We know a lot about Diwali now! We know it is called "the festival of light," and that it is celebrated in India by Hindus. We read the story of Diwali, giving us insight into the reason behind the festival, and also found out that Hindus celebrate Diwali by making Rangoli patterns, wearing special clothes, eating special food, dancing with dandia, and letting off fireworks!
Rangoli patterns are beautiful patterns that are drawn on the ground of people’s homes with chalk and filled in with colored sand. The children made their own patterns which are currently on display on our bulletin board. Check out Shutterfly for photos of the children working on their patterns!
We also made our own diwas, which are essentially small clay lamps. We made these out of model magic and are now painting them. They will come home once they are finished.
We wrapped up Diwali by eating rotli, a very thin bread that is similar to a tortilla. Nearly all the students tried it, and most of them liked it!
We also had an impromptu civics lesson this week, after Ms. Louderback was gone Wednesday for jury duty. Ms. Louderback explained to the class how the jury system works in America, and told the students that she had been picked to be part of a jury. However, after the defendant found out she was going to be on the jury, he was so scared he went ahead and admitted he was guilty. The students found the idea of anyone being scared of Ms. Louderback VERY entertaining. The students then shared a number of stories about car accidents and traffic tickets, so boy, do we have a lot of dirt on y'all now! ;P
Literacy:
This week we learned/reviewed the digraphs “sh” and “th.” Our new sight word was “for.” We are nearly done with our last rotation of literacy workstations, and will start a new set next week.
We enjoyed working on Writer’s Workshop this week, discussing more in-depth the difference between a non-fiction “teaching book” and, say, a collection of drawings about someone’s favorite things. Many of the children are now in the “revision” stage of their writing, and we are excited to see their confidence growing.
Mrs K introduced the 'Storybox' a while back, a special box that holds puppets, props, and backgrounds for her to use while storytelling. We started off with traditional tales and moved on to telling our own stories, letting the students name the characters and choose the setting of our story. We then moved on to the children participating in the story by adding parts to the plot line!
One of our stories was about Forehead the alien. The children loved it so much we are now having weekly adventures with Forehead! We have been encouraging them to draw pictures of Forehead in order to see what the children think he looks like, since we used our imaginations for that character originally and puppets for his friends.
As well as drawing Forehead many of the children have started to create settings and additional characters for us to add to the Storybox. They have also begun to make up their own stories about Forehead and become storytellers, taking over Storybox and telling their own stories to the class. In order to continue to encourage their amazing creative story telling skills we will be making a class book about Forehead's adventures. Once the book is done everyone will get a chance to take it home. In the meantime, be on the lookout for individual stories coming home as the children create them! Photos of our brilliant storytellers can be found on our shutterfly website as well.
Math:
This week we introduced non standard units of measure, measuring ourselves with our handspans and unifix cubes. The children had lots of fun measuring each other and us. Ask them to show you what a handspan is, maybe you can get them to measure you too! you can see photos of our measuring on this weeks shutterfly.
We also introduced probability. We read one of the children’s favorite books, Wacky Wednesday and talked about what things were possible, impossible and certain. We found that a lot of things in that book are impossible. No steering wheels in the back of cars for us! The students then generated lists of things that are certain, possible and impossible.
Our Math Stations came to a close this week and we began a new rotation that includes:
- Count and graph the room - where the children find shapes around the room and then make a graph showing what they found.
- Measuring objects using non standard units, in this case paperclips!
- Tens "Frame Up" - where the children pick ten frames and put their numbers together to see who has the most, similar to the traditional game "War"
- i pads - the children will be using a range of mathematical apps
- Ladybug addition - where the children make addition sums using counters and write down their sum.
- Gingerbread man roll - where the children roll dice and find the corresponding digits.
In other news:
As you all know, last week we put together our Flat Stanley project, creating Flat Students of our own to journey around the country (and maybe even the world!) on fun adventures to share with the class. We owe a HUGE “thank you!” to Lily F’s mom Annette, who not only created plastic pattern templates of clothes for our Flat Students, but also brought in a lovely selection of fabrics for the students to choose from, and helped us in the classroom as the children created their “Flat Student fashions” as well! Max’s mom Sheri and Beckett P’s mom Robin did a great job as Mystery Readers over the past two weeks, and we also really appreciated Mirah’s mom Claire volunteering as Academic Helper.
Have a great weekend everyone! :)