Ask me about tuesday, May 3, 2022

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