Ask Me About Tuesday, March 26, 2019

---

We started our day by studying this Norman Rockwell painting, Going and Coming.  We talked about what we noticed.  After we talked about the car for longer than I expected, we talked about the family inside and what was happening.  The children were quick to use clues in the paintings to understand that the family was having a trip to the beach.  We talked about how the family was feeling on the way to the beach and on the way back.  Clearly, Mom is exhausted, and Dad is actually leaning forward as if to help the car get home even faster.  We also discussed car safety.  Some of the children are actually hanging out the window!  We discussed how cars are now safer for passengers than in the 1950's.  The children really enjoyed discussing this painting, and we will be studying other paintings of Norman Rockwell this week.

We are working to write words quicker instead of getting stuck on a part of the word.  We practiced playing Switcheroo, so we made new words by changing one letter in a three letter word.  Then we practiced writing sentences.  We reread the sentences and looked at the tricky words.  We can stretch the word out and put a little dot under each letter we write for the sounds we hear.  This helps us check to see if we left any sounds out.  We continue to work on remembering to start the sentences with a capital letter and to use punctuation at the end of the sentence.  We use a smiley face to help us check for these things, as well as spaces between words, word wall words spelled correctly, and listening for the sounds in unknown words.  Ask me to tell you what each part of the face represents in the sentence check.

In health, we are learning about families.  We are working on portraits of our own family.  We are showing the position of family members, so we are working from youngest to oldest.  Now I know how old all of you are, or how old your child thinks you are!  We are not putting that in the portraits!
Since we are talking about families, this was a good time to read the story Potato: A Tale From The Great Depression, by Katie Lied.  This is a family story that was passed down to the author by her grandparents and aunt.  We talked about the importance of family stories as a way of learning more about our families.  Ask me to tell you what happened when the father in the story could not find work in Iowa.  
Yesterday we visited Ohio, and I know you received the postcard, but the kids really wanted you to see Brutus, the mascot for The Ohio State.  I showed them what a buckeye was, so of course I had to show them Brutus as well since he has a buckeye for his head.

In math, we are problem solving using decomposition.  The kids are listening to word problems and using pictures, number bonds, fingers, manipulatives or addition facts they know to solve problems.  We are beginning to work on addition and subtraction facts through five.  
We took a word wall check-up to see how we are doing with spelling all the kindergarten word wall words.  It is the expectation that by the end of the year they can read and spell these words automatically.  These are not words they should stretch out because that slows the child down in their reading and writing, and often these words do not look like they sound.

Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe
​