Today we studied these pictures to determine how they go together. The children noticed moms were in every picture right away, but then after looking at each of the pictures they determined these pictures showed just some of the many things mom do for their children every single day. We then thought of adjectives that describe moms and made a long list. The students then thought of their moms and began a flipbook for their mom with adjectives they picked from the list or thought of themselves. The children worked very hard on the books and are anxious to use colored pencils to color-in their drawings on Friday.
In math we worked on story problems. We worked with problems where the sum was known, but the addends were not. For example, "Miss Wolfe has seven jellybeans. Some are red, and some are green. How many of each color could she have?" For this, children are using what they know about decomposing to find possible answers. 7= 1 + 6, 7 = 2 + 5, etc. Have a nice evening! Juliet
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We had a great time at Rose Hill Manor today. The children learned what it was like to live long ago. They especially enjoyed playing with the toys from long ago. We visited the manor house where we played in the parlor and learned about who lived at Rose Hill. We also visited a bedroom and the kids' room and playroom. There was a room where the children learned about how fabric was made and even got to try out carding that we learned about when we read Charlie Needs a Cloak. We visited the kitchen in the manor house and enjoyed popcorn made over the open fire as well as mint tea from the Rose Hill garden behind the manor house. We went to the log cabin that is also on the property. A family of nine lived in the cabin. We also visited the blacksmith shop and an ice house. Ask me to tell you about my trip!
The docents at Rose Hill Manor were so impressed by the kindergarten classes from Bells Mill. The children were very well-behaved and actively listening and answering questions. They were so respectful of the toys they were allowed to play with and so gentle in playing the old piano. Thanks to our the parents who went on the trip with us! Have a nice evening! Juliet Today we read "Charlie Needs a Cloak" by Tomie DePaola. We used Word Bird Strategies to find out what unknown words meant. In this book, most of the words that students did not know the meaning of were words associated with making cloth. In this book, Charlie is a shepherd whose sheep nibble on his cloak. The book shows the process Charlie goes through during fall and winter to make a new, red cloak. Ask me to tell you what a cloak is and what Charlie does to make a new cloak.
We studied pictures to see the tools Charlie would use in making cloth. We will see these things tomorrow on our field trip, and may even get to card some wool. Please be sure your child is dressed for the weather tomorrow. It looks like we have a stormy night ahead of us, as well the possibility of showers tomorrow. We will be indoors most of the trip, but will be walking between buildings, so children will need to be prepared for wet grass and rain. Please don't forget your child needs a bag lunch. We will not bring anything back with us so anything not eaten will be thrown away. Juliet Today we worked more with a Thinking and Academic Success Skill we are working with this marking period. We learned more about being original in our thinking. We focused on turning the ideas of others into something new and different. To understand this better, I showed the children a short video clip of The Dying Swan, from Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens. We watched a traditional version of the ballet first, then compared it to another version by Yo Yo Ma and Lil Buck. Here are the two videos. Ask me to tell you what I notice that is the same and how they are different. Today we also read two more Cinderella stories. We read Cindy Ellen: A Wild Western Cinderella, by Susan Lowell, and then later The Salmon Princess; An Alaska Cinderella Story, by Mindy Dwyer. You can imagine how excited we were to find that the fairy godmother in The Salmon Princess was an eagle! Ask me to tell you about how the setting and characters made the story original, even though it is based on the fairy tale Cinderella. In the computer lab, and in math today, we worked with graphing. We collected data to find which version of the Cinderella stories we liked most. The versions we voted on are just the ones we watched a clip of or read the book. We have 23 Cinderella books so this could change! Here is our graph. Ask me to tell you what our graph shows. We made storyboards of how we would present the story of Cinderella in an original way. Many of the children relied on using characters they were familiar with already to start their storyboard. Some chose the setting first, which led to the characters they would put in their book. They also thought about what magic would be in the story, as well as what the ball would be like in their version.
Have a nice evening! Juliet Today we analyzed different Cinderella books from different cultures. We worked in groups of three and rotated through several books. Then we talked about how the setting of the stories changed the story and what remained the same. In all of the stories we examined, the basic plot stayed the same, but there were differences in the characters and some of the events. We got together with our third grade buddies once again and finished watching the DisneyNature Bears movie. We learned that being a mother bear is not easy! Sky, the mother bear in the movie, kept her cubs safe from predators and from other things that occur in nature. She kept them safe, taught them to find food, and took them on a long journey to find enough food to keep them from starving in the winter. Ask me to tell you about how Sky took care of the cubs Amber and Scout.
Have a great weekend! Juliet Today we read a great Cajun version of Little Red Riding Hood called Petite Rouge, by Mike Artell. The book is told with the Cajun dialect, and I really did the best I could! Ask me to tell you how the setting and characters are different than the traditional version. This story has a trick in it too, like other folktales we have read. Ask me to tell you who got tricked, and how!
We also practiced writing words with long vowels in them that end with silent e. We read a poem about a crocodile. We learned several things you should never do to a crocodile, even if it looks like they are smiling! Have a nice evening! Juliet Today we had a visit with Mrs. Kanter. She talked with us about the playground and the Friendship Bench. The children learned about behaviors that encourage positive interactions outside. We also learned that the Friendship Bench is somewhere we can sit when we don't have anyone to play with outside. When someone sees us there, they may come over and invite us to play with them. We read another folktale today. We read Stone Soup, retold by Heather Forest. In the story, two weary travelers stop at homes in a lovely town to ask for a small bite of food, but everyone in the town says they have no food. The two travelers stand on the edge of a well and talk in loud voices to be heard by others. They say that if in this elegant little town there is no food, they should share their magical stone soup. But they need a big black iron pot to make their food. Ask me to tell you how the travelers tricked the people in the town into giving them food. In the end the townspeople find out the soup did have a magical ingredient, but it wasn't the stone. Ask me to tell you what the magical ingredient was! Today in math we learned about a new symbol. We learned about the greater than and less than symbol. We practiced writing number sentences to compare amounts using the symbol. We have a good way to remember which way the symbol goes in the equation to show greater or less than. Ask me to tell you how I know which way the larger end of the symbol goes between the numbers. Here's a little reminder! Today we read and talked more about how we can take care of our home, the Earth. It is so exciting to hear what families are doing already. Two big ideas came out of our discussion and reading today. We talked about reducing. Ask me to tell you what the word reduce means. We know that we can be more careful about what we buy and think about if we really need to have it. We also talked about animals, and how what humans do effects the lives and survival of animals. We read the book, Hey, Get Off of My Train, by John Burningham. This book was about a little boy who takes an imaginary train ride through different parts of the world. Animals beg to get on the train because their survival is being threatened. Ask me to tell you about the animals and why they were getting on the train.
We wrote to tell about what we love about our Earth today, what we already do to help take care of our Earth, and what we can do to be even better stewards of Earth. We are working hard to make our writing easy for others to read. We talked about making sure as we work, we focus on using capital letters at the beginning of sentences, using punctuation and spaces between words, and making our writing and illustrations easy for our reader to understand. We read The Three Little Pigs today. This version is a little different from the traditional version, but the ending is the same. We know folk tales have someone being tricked in them. Ask me to tell you how the third little pig tricked the wolf in this story. Don't forget, tomorrow is Election Day and we do not have school. I was reminded several times as I forgot and said tomorrow we will do this or that, but I will remember tomorrow morning! Have a nice evening! Juliet Today we had a great time with our third grade buddies from Ms. Wang's class. We watched about half of the DisneyNature movie Bears. This is a movie that chronicles the first year of life of two brown bear cubs in Alaska. Ask me to tell you the names of the bear cubs. DisneyNature movies are filmed with no intervention of what is happening to the animals, so a couple parts today may have been a little scary, but I had reassured the children before the movie that the cubs are fine in the end of the movie. The bear cubs are actually born in a reserve so there are some very close up pictures of the cubs when they are quite tiny. After they leave their den in the reserve, they have to cross the snowy mountains to go to areas where there is food. Ask me to tell what things the bears ate. Here are some facts we are learning more about in the movie. And a little something to smile about! Have a great weekend!
Juliet Today we listened to a Japanese folktale called The Badger and the Magic Fan by Tony Johnston. This folktale is about a magic fan that makes noses grow and shrink. Tengu children are in the story too, which are goblin-like creatures with large red noses who usually carry fans. A naughty badger comes along and tricks the tengu children so he can get their fan. Ask me to tell you what the badger did to trick the children. After the badger gets the fan, he waves it over a sleeping beautiful lady, whose nose grows very, very long. Ask me to tell you how the story ends. We were great Word Birds, using many of the strategies we have been learning about to understand new words that make the text tricky. Ask me to tell you the meaning of vexed. Before we went home today, we reread the story and stopped along the way to name opposite words to many of the verbs in the story. Today we took notes from information texts about the animals we are researching. I was amazed to watch how focused students were as they studied the photographs and read parts of the book to find information to fill in their charts with information to use in their book. Have a nice evening!
Juliet |