ask me about wednesday, november 29, 2023

We started our day by looking at these unusual landforms.  We continued working on questioning, and sure had a lot of questions about these geysers.  We took a peek at the webcam at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.  The National Parks have webcams you can view to see what is going on in different parts of the parks.  We watched but didn't see Old Faithful erupt, but we did watch a short video clip so we could see just what happens with geysers.  If you would like to take a peek at Old Faithful and see what she's up to, here's the link:
www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm

We played the game "I Have a Gift for You."  This is a theater game that helps children develop their theory of mind, their ability to  recognize others' beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions and thoughts, and to begin to understand that they may be different from their own.  This is a game we began today but will return to often to help develop these understandings more.  Today we thought about what the person sitting to the right of us likes and might like to receive as a gift.  The children were encouraged to dramatically hold the pretend item and pass it to the next person, telling them what it is using descriptive language.  We'll work on that more!  We also worked to use a "loud and proud" voice so that everyone in the room could hear them.  The other person acknowledged the gift and we moved on to the next person.  As we continue to play this game over time, I hope to see fewer puppies and kittens being given as gifts.  The last child to give a gift was practical and just gave the child to his right $20!  Ask me to tell you what imaginary gift I gave. 
The Social Emotional school-wide topic for December is diversity.  We got a little headstart today and read the book Snippets: A Story About Paper Shapes, by Diane Alber.  This story is about a little shape named Snippet who is an irregular polygon.  He notices the houses are all just squares and triangles, exactly the same except in color.  Snippet has an irregular shape so is directed to go jump in the pile of irregular shapes because he cannot be part of the other homes.  Ask me to tell you what happens when Snippet joins the pile.  
I introduced this story talking about diversity and what it is, and by introducing the word race and racism.  We had a very short talk about how groups can leave others out they perceive to be not good enough to be in their community.  
We did more writing today.  I encouraged the children to write two sentences about their favorite type of weather.  The first sentence was to identify the type of weather, and the second sentence was to tell what they do in the weather.  I modeled writing about my favorite weather, reminding them to put spaces between their words, start their sentence with a capital letter, and end the sentence with punctuation.  They did a nice job and will work more on this piece tomorrow.
We also learned about temperature in science.  We will be recording the weather each day starting next week.  The children will have weekly calendars and one of our recordings will be the temperature.

We had indoor recess today due to the cold, so I'm hoping tomorrow will be a little warmer so the kids can get outside.  Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe