We started our day with another song.  The children had expressed an interest in how the muppets/puppets for Sesame Street work and if they are real.  So I showed this other song from the Sesame Street 50th Anniversary Concert.  These poor kids have to listen to so many stories from my childhood, but I had to tell them about my amazing music teacher Miss Ogrand.  She would put on these huge shows that involved the entire school, K-6, each year.  One she did was a Sesame Street show.  Each of the chorus members brought a tube sock to school and we made a muppet.  We had lots of songs to memorize, this song being one of them.  We watched the video of Sing today, practiced singing it a little, then worked with words with ing.  We also worked with illustrating the song by showing the children singing in the pictures.  The children came up with several different ways including making quarter notes, talking/singing bubbles, and open mouths.  The children did such a great job with their illustration and writing 5 words with ing on their poem paper.

We are so proud of DC9.  S/He branched last night at 7:36 which means both her/his feet left the nest and went up on a branch.  It seemed effortless when you look at the video.  S/He stayed up there a bit, looked around, looked down and worried me, and then went back down into the nest.  DC9 spends a lot of time on the railings of the nest.  S/He is just over 8 weeks old now.

We voted on a name for DC9.  Each table group, shown by the paw print, gets one vote.  We had some ties, so we will be submitting a vote for each name.  

In math, we worked to catch mistakes in counting and fix them up.  We solved a story problem and wrote a number sentence and number bond.  We played a game with dice to make number bonds too.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

I wanted to update you earlier, but in light of the unthinkable tragedy in Texas, I just needed some time to process.  I'm sending a link with information on talking with your child about school violence.  We will not talk about what happened in class unless it comes up, and if it does I will just acknowledge what happened and talk about feelings, and who can help them at school if they need to talk to about their strong feelings. As much as I can, I will do that privately so the children who may not know about the shooting will not hear about it at school.  Here is a link with some guidance about talking with your child about school violence.  I know you may know most of what is shared here, but it's good to just read through it again and hopefully you'll find a nugget of information you hadn't thought about before.
www.colorincolorado.org/sites/default/files/15_Tips_English.pdf
We got through our MAP RF testing yesterday as well as our MAP P testing today.  Anyone who was absent either day will have to make it up tomorrow or Thursday.  We started a special writing project about a favorite toy.  Today we brainstormed some of our favorite toys, then decided on one that we will write about. We visited Iowa today and read a book called Ten Beautiful Things, by Molly Beth Griffin.  This book is about a little girl who is travelling with her grandmother to her home in Iowa.  The little girl is going to live with her grandmother, so she is somewhat somber.  Her grandmother suggests they watch for ten beautiful things on their trip.  After we listened to the story we worked together to construct the list again from memory.  I caught up the Read the USA classroom, so this book is on there.  Ask me to tell you some, or all, of the ten beautiful things identified on the trip. 
We started our day with some music, instead of a picture, for our talk time.  We talked about places we would like to visit and/or live.  The children loved the music and talking about this, as did I, so I'm sharing the music with you.  Ask me about where I would like to live or visit.   Be prepared for belly laughs when the children see Ernie's feet and legs.  Enjoy.

We had a fun time today talking about toys.  We shared what we found out our parents and grandparents played with when they were kids.  I shared a couple of my favorite toys I had as a kid.  I was interrogated by the kids about Baby First Step.  I shared that her foot was broken after my dad stepped on it.  So many questions.  I'm sure it was an accident, but I do remember my dad breaking my record player too during the Donny Osmond phase I went through.  The turntable wouldn't turn and it was plastic, so when my Dad tried to fix it, well, it broke too. Anyway, in the afternoon we finally had time to play with old toys.  I quickly showed the kids the kids the toys and they had time to try them out.  We'll play more next week.  I showed some friends how I could still almost play jacks.  I thought I did a pretty good job!  Jacks are a little hard for kinders.  We had wooden tops, Lincoln Logs, tiddlywinks, marbles, tabletop wooden pin bowling, cup and ball, ring toss, and Jacob's Ladder. It is so much fun to watch these kids play.  They take turns, encourage each other and are persistent, as you can see in the pictures below.  They are so easy to work with as a class.  It was free choice for them as to what they tried out, and they stayed in control, were gentle with the toys and played with them appropriately.  Some of the kids stuck with just a toy or two, practicing with it until they got better.  Others sampled all the games.  I hope you enjoy the photos! 

I haven't been to Rose Hill Manor in a couple years, but if you are looking for something to do on the weekend, Rose Hill Manor is Frederick is really geared toward you children.  There is a manor house, a log cabin, a blacksmith workshop, an ice house/root cellar, and a carriage museum.  When I have taken classes there, the children get to play with old-fashioned toys.  They also see how people cooked over the fire in a big fireplace in the kitchen.  It's not a huge place which also makes it just right for a visit with little kids.  

Have a great weekend!
​Miss Wolfe

We continue to learn about culture, traditions and holidays.  We focused today on Mother's Day.  We read the book Saturday, by Oge Mora.  This book is beautiful with collage illustrations.  This is the story of a mother and daughter who have special things they do every Saturday since the mother works the other six days of the week.  One special Saturday has some bumps in the road, and nothing seems to go as planned.  Ask me to tell you what happens and how the story ends.
In math we worked with digi-blocks and modeled numbers to 20.  We are saying "one ten three" and 13, to emphasize place value.  This is giving them a good visual of what that number really is and it's place value.  
In social studies we read the book Soul Food Sunday, by Winsome Bingham.  This book tells the story of a family that has Sunday dinner together every week.  The granny in the story teaches her young grandson how to make soul food.  She gives him important tasks and then praises him for a job well done.  Ask me to tell you what kinds of soul food they made.
Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

I had to laugh to myself when typing "Ask Me About" because I'm guessing many of you didn't have to ask your kinder anything, they probably just told you all about DC9 getting tagged yesterday.  I showed the children parts of a video of Jim the biologist, who we are all on a first name basis with now, visiting the eagle's nest and taking DC9 down out of the nest to tag and get a blood sample to determine the gender.  The children had so many questions.  They were absolutely captivated by the video. I had them write in their eagle journal when Dr. Smith walked in, and they started telling her all about what was going on in the nest.  She was followed by Mrs. Kemp and a visitor who also got an earful about the eagles.  I need to add more pages to the journals because we have so much more to write about DC9's milestones and what we notice that is happening on the nest.  As the children were writing, I was noticing that many of the children are really developing some great writing habits.  They are re-reading what they are writing by pointing to the words with their pencil and quietly reading it aloud.  They are saying the words as they write them, and pounding or breaking multi-syllable words to spell them.  Some of them are using the alphabet on their nametag to look for letters as they are writing when needed.  
In Benchmark we read about celebrating people such as Martin Luther King, Jr.  We answered "right there" questions about why the author thought the people were important by finding the answer "right there" in the text.  
We visited Mississippi today and read a very powerful book about Civil Rights Act of 1964.  I told the children it was 1963 and I was just a few months old at the time, so I was really a year old, but one of my friends insisted he was alive then too and remembered this, so we were both wrong!  The book is called Freedom Summer, by Deborah Wiles and is a well told story about the kinds of things that were happening after the Civil Rights Act.  The book tells about two friends, one white and one black, who are good friends but cannot swim in the city pool because of segregation.  After the Civil Rights Act, the city fills the pool with asphalt so it cannot be used by anyone.  The two boys are running up the hill, excited to go to the pool when they see this happening.  It's also so interesting to watch the children as I read this part because they are smiling and happy that the two friends will get to swim together.  They really feel the disappointment the characters in the book felt.  There is a YouTube readaloud of the book on our Read the USA Google classroom if you would like to see this book.  The story ends with the two friends going to a little store for ice pops.  The two boys for the first time, go into the store together.  The book ends with us not knowing what happens in the store, but we were all hopeful both boys would be allowed to stay in the store and buy their own ice pop.  
We are continuing to work with tens and ones in math.  We did some enrichment last week because the children have a good understanding of tens and ones.  We used digi-blocks to model numbers up to ten.  We also used Rekenreks to show numbers, and our foam ten frames.
We continued to talk about different cultures.  Today we took a brief look at different clothing, food and shelters.  I have many books in our classroom library so the children can continue to look at different cultures around the world.
If you would like to see the video of DC9 being tagged, take a look below.  It's really interesting.  We loved the part where DC9 opens his/her wings to try and scare off Jim the Biologist.  Poor Jim gets flapped later, and gets bitten by DC9, but we are all proud of how brave DC9 was yesterday.  His parents watched from afar and were cautious about going back to the nest, but it looks like all is back to normal this evening with several big feedings and Lotus staying on the nest more with DC9.  I'm so glad because it was breaking my heart to see him alone on the nest.
Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe