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Today we worked more on finding information about the animals we are writing about. We also read a poem and worked with words with ing. We practiced thinking fluently by playing Hot Potato and naming different ways of communicating now and long ago. Then, we read a book called Mail by the Pail, which is about how mail is delivered to freighters. We will learn more about Michigan, the state the story is set in tomorrow. Today we ran out of time! We played math games to continue practicing adding 1, 2 or 3 to a number quickly, adding sums to twelve, and finding a strategy for another addition game. We also practiced writing numbers to 100 by playing a game with the 100's board called Neighbors.
Have a nice evening! Juliet
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Today we began thinking about animals that are similar. We studied pictures of primates first to understand the concept of similar better. Then, we came up with such a list of other animals that are similar. Ask me to name some animals that are similar to each other!
We worked on taking notes from multiple sources today. LOL, yes, this is kindergarten. We did it in a kindergarten way. We used a chart with headings can, have and are, then we listed what we read or studied from pictures in information books. We will be looking online as well for additional resources. Then we will write our own informational text about the animal we chose, using the information we found in books. We read a really simple, but important book today. Today we started our day by studying a painting to discover what was happening in it. We used clues in the picture to determine what the picture was showing. Ask me to tell you about the painting!  We learned more about communication now and long ago. We learned about Alexander Graham Bell and his inventions, especially the telephone. In math, we practiced recalling different ways to deconstruct numbers. We cheered for the numbers with a simple cheer. For example, for five I would say, "I say four, you say____, four, _____, four ______, Yaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy five!" The children would fill in the missing part. We did this to show different ways for each number, all the way up to ten! We had a great time learning a new math game today too. We'll work in math stations again tomorrow so everyone can play all the games.
Have a nice evening! Juliet Today we welcomed a new student to our class! Ask me to tell you her name! We passed the Talking Fish to get to know her better and told her three important things about each of us! Ice cream seems to be very important to many of us! We also learned about originality, which is our creative thinking skill for this quarter. We watched a traditional version of this beautiful dance. Then we watched a version of the dance that is original, with Lil Buck dancing the part of the swan. Amazing! We visited New Jersey today in our journey to read across America. We read about Thomas Edison and his labs in New Jersey. We read about many of his inventions and how he improved other inventions from other people as well. We will do more work with how these inventions, especially in communication, have changed our lives.
We worked more with story problems and writing number sentences to go with the stories. I'll be sending out several Sign-Up Genius sign-ups later tonight. We will be having several talent days in class in May for children to share something unique or special that they can do. This will be part of our Social Studies unit of study about ourselves and family. I will also be sending out sign-ups for the bake sale bakers and sellers. Our bake sale will be May 31, from 10 - 2 at Giant Foods in Potomac Village. Have a nice evening! Juliet Today was a busy, fun day! We had a health lesson with Mrs. Kanter in the morning. We had a maker workshop to create a toy. We ended up a lot of puppets made by the girls, which was my fault for introducing a pre-cut shape! The boys went right for the boxes and at first wanted to recreate the ramps they saw at Rose Hill to use for marbles or cars. If we had more time, I would have liked to give them time to redesign and build again, but we are so busy! We had a visit from our 3rd grade buddies today. We played strategy games with them. The important part of these games is to play them repeatedly for the children to come up with a strategy to win. The games have simple rules so they can be played by children at different levels. I will send copies of the directions and game boards home on Monday. You will just need to find some counters to use for the game pieces, and you will be able to have a fun family game night! It was great to watch the third grade and kindergarten students playing together. They really enjoy each other!
Thanks to everyone who came out the Monkey Kingdom movie last night. I really enjoyed it, and the kids were so excited to talk about it today when they came in. We didn't do much with it because we have children who are going over the weekend and next week, so we didn't want to spoil anything! DisneyNature has an incredible educator guide that I will be using to cover some of the science topics we will be talking about over this quarter. Have a wonderful weekend! Juliet We had a great time during word work today as we worked with words with bossy ar! We watched a short clip with a song to help us remember. We practiced writing ar words, then worked on writing words faster. This will help us when we are writing and reading so we don't have to stretch them out. Today we visited Missouri. We read River Boy, the Story of Mark Twain, by William Andersen. We learned about a riverboat and a raft as transportation. Our word birds used background knowledge and context clues to talk about the words adventure, mischief and shallow. Ask me to tell you about some of Samuel Clemens,
AKA Mark Twain adventures! Today we looked through and read some information texts about animals. We chose an animal that we will be writing a report about and began to gather facts to use in our booklet. I hope you are able to come see Monkey Kingdom today at 4:50 at AMC RIO! Juliet Happy Earth Day! Today we participated in the school recycling container contest. Yesterday we shared ideas about what our theme for our container should be, and most kids wanted it to be about protecting endangered animals. So today we researched what animals are on the World Wildlife Federation Endangered list. We drew pictures of the animals and cut them out and put them on our recycling container. We added pieces of paper with words about what people can do to help protect these endangered animals. Most kids seemed focused on not shooting animals, but we talked about protecting habitats where these animals live so they have the space and food they need to survive. We also talked about the Earth Day 3 R's. Ask me to show you the 3 R's of Earth Day. We read a beautiful book called One Child, One Planet, by Bridget McGovern Llewellyn, which provided information about the environment as well as reassurance that we can help our planet in some very simple ways. Our recycling container did not win, but we did get some compliments about what we did. We wrote promises about what we will do to help the environment.
We have lots of excited kids about going to the Monkey Kingdom movie tomorrow night. We will just meet in the lobby at Rio, and go in just before the previews start. If last year is any indication, we may have the theater to ourselves, so we will be easy to find if you need to come in late. I'm so excited to see this movie! I saw a rough cut of the preview a year ago at a Disney teacher event, and I've been looking forward to this since then! Have a nice evening! Juliet Today we read a poem called Bird Talk. We talked about quotation marks, or talking marks. We reviewed the th blend and found words that begin or end with th. Th is a tricky blend, but we know when we feel our tongue under our front two teeth, it is probably the th sound we are making. The birds in the poem were talking about humans are different from birds. We read a book named People, by Peter Spier, and talked about ways people are different and the same as each other. In math, we practiced addition to 12 by rolling dice and coloring in on a grid how many times we rolled each sum. We rolled the dice twenty times. This information may come in handy for a strategy math game we are playing tomorrow. The children do not need to memorize addition facts to twelve, but were using the "counting-on" strategy mostly to add the two dice. We don't want them counting all the dots on both die, but instead to count on from the bigger number if they don't know the answer right away. Today we visited Idaho as we are Reading Across America. We read Mailing May, by Michael Tunnell. This story was based on a true story about a little five year old who was mailed to her Grandma! It was set in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho about a hundred years ago, and a train was used to deliver the mail to towns. Ask me to tell you what flabbergasted means! This was a great story to talk about how transportation is used to move goods and services.
Have a nice evening! Juliet Today we read a great poem about a train. The sound of the train is in the poem, which made it fun to read. We worked with making words with blends we found in the poem. We will be learning about transportation this week. Ask me to tell you what transportation means. We participated in a webinar this afternoon with Dr. Jane Goodall. We took notes to remember important information. Dr. Good talked about her work in Tanzania with chimpanzees. Ask me to show you my notes and tell you about what I learned today about Dr. Goodall, her work, and how chimpanzees are like humans. I'm so proud of the way the students listened and learned about taking notes. We will be writing animal reports over the next week, and asking an expert is one way we can learn new information for our reports. We got to see a real expert today! We will learn more about Dr. Goodall over the next couple weeks. In math, we played addition games and practiced making ten in our heads quickly.
Have a nice evening! Juliet Today was a busy day! We finished our reports about Rose Hill Manor. I'll be looking those over on the weekend and will send them home next week. The kids worked hard putting in details about one part of Rose Hill Manor they were especially interested in. We also visited the Science Fair. We had four entries from our class, which made us very proud. I took a picture of the boards that were created, and each child told about their science fair project. We had very interesting projects, and they did an awesome job telling about their project and what they learned. Below are pictures of the project boards: We shared our toys we brought in, and I shared toys I played with as a child. Mine were only pictures because we didn't save much in our house, except memories of course! Next week we will have our Toy Maker Faire. Today we just ran out of time and I don't want our toy makers to be rushed.
We did a Word Wall Word check-up. Monday I'll send home their test paper, along with the word wall words so you see how they did and what they need to practice. We tried to go quicker this time to be sure we can write these words quickly. I glanced through the papers, and am very pleased! We visited Kansas today, so of course, we had to read The Wizard of Oz. We looked at what we would see if we visited Kansas, learned about buffalo, twisters, and the native American nation call Kanza, or people of the south wind. Hmmmmm, now we know how Kansas got it's name! Be sure to check out the homepage for information on the National Parks. This weekend entry to National Parks is free! I put additional information on about the 100 Anniversary of the Parks next year. I'll be trying to upload a video to show you what has been happening when we take Brain Breaks. We have some amazing little dancers! You will notice that the level of participation in the dancing varies, but they all couldn't wait to see the videos. Hopefully, I'll figure out some way to show you these videos because they will leave you with a smile! Have a wonderful weekend! Juliet |
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