We m,ade it!  It's been a busy week, but happily we were able to have some special activities here at the end of the week.  
Today we signed our No Place for Hate pledge.  We talked about what the word pledge means.  Ask me to tell you what it means to take a pledge.  
Students will be wearing a No Place for Hate wristband home today!
This is the No Place for Hate pledge we signed today
• I promise to do my best to treat everyone fairly.
• I promise to do my best to be kind to everyone—even if they are not like me.
• If I see someone being hurt or bullied, I will tell a teacher.
• Everyone should be able to feel safe and happy in school.
• I want our school to be No Place for Hate®.
We will talk about how we can do this, especially in our weekly SEL lessons on Thursdays, as well as when we meet each month with Mrs. Kanter.

We learned about the weather, animals, plants and people in the winter yesterday.  Ask me to tell you something about what happens to plants, and what animals and people do to survive in the winter.
We also zoomed into one of our favorite parts of winter.  Snow!  We learned about Snowflake Bentley, who was one of the first people to photograph snowflakes.  We learned it's nearly impossible that two snowflakes would be the same.
Today we made snowflakes out of coffee filters.  We decorated them with sequins so they sparkle.  We noticed how with each snowflake we made, we got better at making them look special.  We made more cuts and were able to design them better.  Here we are working hard to make beautiful snowflakes!

We celebrated the Bear Bucks we've earned today.  We watched the old Winnie the Pooh movie, narrated by Sebastian Cabat.  I told the kids this was a movie that was on television when I was a kid.  They enjoyed the stories told, and I enjoyed hearing the stories again!
Here's a few more pictures of the kids today, in their pajamas for our Spirit Day, along with the necklaces the kids made today.  

I'd like to thank you for the donation you made to Share Our Strength as a class gift.  This is a great organization that provides many programs for families, provides food for kids in the summer when they aren't in school, and provides breakfast programs for many students.  
Have a great winter break and I'll see you in 2020!
​~Miss Wolfe

We played a fun game in math today.  This is a simple game you can play at home too.  All you need are 12 beans or pennies to use as counters, a die or 2 dice, and a paper with two straight lines.  Here are the directions for Make it Equal.
Work with a partner. 
Partners will take turns rolling a die or dice.  After they roll, they put their counters on one of the lines on the paper.  The partner rolls and counts out their counters, then lines them up with the counters on the other line to make comparing the two easier.   
Partner A has to make their counters equal to their partner’s by taking off, moving or putting on more beans.  Partner B counts to check.  Switch roles, and play again!
If your child easily identifies the dots on one die, they can play with two.
After you have played a few times,, turn the paper the other way so the children get used to seeing the comparison of the counters both vertically and horizontally.  

Have a great weekend!
​Miss Wolfe

We talked about bodies of water today in Social Studies.  We studied photographs to find how streams, rivers, lakes and oceans are the same and how they are different.  Ask me to tell you about the photographs and how the bodies of water are different and the same.
We talked to Mrs. Kanter today about making and keeping friends.  Ask me to tell you about how I make and keep friends.

In math, we practiced comparing the length of things in the classroom with a string. We talked about making sure we lined up our item and the endpoint of the string to be sure we were comparing accurately.  The kids made a t-chart and listed items that were either longer or shorter than their string.  They are bringing their string home to compare items at home too.  ​

Instead of our usual playtime, we played board games once again.  This is a good age to start introducing board games.  Today they seemed more interesting in just have a "board game tasting" and many just tried out different games then floated to another game.  We are going to work on sticking to a game until someone wins.  The group playing Trouble stuck with it and were quite serious about their game.  Here are some snaps of the fun the kids had!

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

Today we talked about wind.  We thought about words we can use to describe how strong the wind is blowing.  We studied pictures to match words to the wind in the picture.  We used clues in the picture to pick our best guess of how strong the wind was in the picture.  Ask me to tell you about these words and pictures.
In reading, we continued to read about what animals need to survive.  We thought about the author's reasons and used the chapter headings to help us know the author's ideas.  We read the text and identified the reasons the author used to support her ideas.  Ask me to tell you what animals need to survive.
In math, we began working with measurement.  We focused on using precise language to tell about the length of objects.  We also talked about how important is to measurement accurately, so matching endpoints of objects when comparing two different objects.  
We enjoyed a beautiful wordless picture book called Circle of Friends, by Giora Carmi.  This is the story of a young boy who buys a sunflower muffin in a bakery, and after eating part of it, leaves it for a man who is homeless who is sleeping on a park bench.  The man shares the muffin as well, and something beautiful happens.  Ask me to tell you the story, and why the author/illustrator only used color on the most important part of the pictures.  I have so many favorite books, but this one always makes me smile.  Wordless picture books are such a wonderful way to encourage children to tell stories and to talk about the story.  Studying the illustrations and making inferences is key to understanding these books.  When I share a wordless book with students, we always look through the pages slowly without talking first, then go back and tell the story using book talk.   

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We studied subways around the world this morning looking for shapes used in their design.  Ask me to tell you about the shapes I see in these photographs!
We worked with making new words by changing the beginning sound of three words.  Ask me to read the lists I made.  

Tomorrow is Neon Nickel Day!

Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe

We had a busy, fun day!  We had whole group Chromebook time today.  The children listened to a story, played a memory game with plane and solid shapes, and used pattern blocks to solve puzzles.  These games can be found in our Google Classroom and on our homework page on this website.
We talked a little more about landforms and read an amazing book called Grand Canyon, by Jason Chin.  This book is a little advanced for the kinders, but I read parts to them and we discussed the illustrations.  First of all, the illustrations are gorgeous!  But there are also plants and animals around some of the illustrations that show where you would find them and how their adaptations help them to survive.  The book takes you back to when the Grand Canyon first began to form.  It shows what it would have looked like at that time and again, what plants and animals would have been in that area.  The book also shows you the layers of rock and labels what would be in that layer of rock.  Our kinders can learn a lot from illustrations in books even when the text may be somewhat advanced.  
Here are a few more pictures from our week!  I realized I have not been posting many photographs of these learners lately, so here are some from our week!

Have a great weekend!
​Miss Wolfe

We started our day by studying this city made of shapes!  Ask me to name the solid and plane shapes I see.

We read a sweet story called Wag, by Patrick McDonnell, about a dog and his happy, wagging tail.  Throughout the story, the narrator asks why Earl's tail is wagging.  Ask me to tell you what some of the things are that makes Earl's tail wag, and what his wagging tail means.  We wrote about what makes us wag!  The children got their ideas down on paper.  They wrote and drew a picture to go with their words.  We are working to be sure we are starting sentences with capital letters, putting spaces between words, and using punctuation marks at the end of sentences.  The children have also been working hard to really stretch out words to hear all the sounds in the words as they write.  They got their ideas down and made beautiful illustrations to go with their words.  We will be working to fix up their writing by working together to correct some of the mistakes to make their message readable.
In math today, we studied artwork by Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Henri Matisse and discovered how these artists used shapes to create pictures and designs.  We were inspired by their art and used stencils to sketch our own designs and pictures.  We will be adding crayon and watercolor paint to our pictures to complete them.  The children love using shape stencils!
We read a beautiful story during our Book a Day time today called Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed, by Emily Pearson.  This story is about a little girl who picks blueberries and leaves them at her neighbors door as a surprise.  Her neighbor makes blueberry muffins and shares them with five people she thinks may have left the blueberries for her.  Her happiness is shared and passed on throughout the book as others do kind deeds for other people until this kindness has been passed along around the world.  The main idea of the story is that one good deed can change the world, or at the very least make someone's day a little better.  We used what we know about words to define deed and extraordinary.  Ask me to tell you what ordinary and extraordinary mean.
Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We started our morning by studying more shapes in nature, and shapes that were human-made.  Ask me to tell  you about the shapes in the photographs!
We made solid shapes out of playdough.  As we made the shapes together, we talked about the attributes of the shapes.  It's important the children are able to tell about the shapes, as well as compare them to other shapes.  They had a great time making the solid shapes.  Here are a few snaps I was able to get as the children worked.​

We had fun watching our water spheres grow yesterday.  Here's what they look like!  Before the kids washed their hands for lunch, I let them put their hand in the vase and get a quick feel of these very soothing beads.  Ask me to tell you some words that described how the spheres felt!

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

Today I had a surprise for the students.  We grew spheres to use in our geometry unit.  I brought in tiny water beads that look like colorful specks.  We added water to a vase with the water beads and watched them expand as the specks absorbed the water.  It was a bit distracting because the kids kept noticing the changes, but it was a lot of fun!  We can't wait to see what they look like tomorrow!  
We played a fun game I called Bump It.  Each child had a paper, either red, yellow, or green, with a letter/s on them.  The green papers had a beginning sound on them, the yellow paper had either an a or i on them, and the red paper had additional consonants. I put ck on one of the red papers since these letters work together and make the /k/ sound.  We started with the word wag, then changed one letter at a time to make new words.  The children with the letters for wag stood in front of the room.  The children each made their sound then gently bumped the child next to them to produce the sounds.  The class all said the word made.  Then I changed a letter to make a new word.  The kids had so much fun playing this game and became more fluent as we played.
For our Book a Day book, we read a Read the U.S.A. book.  We visited Louisiana and read Petite Rouge, A Cajun Red Riding Hood, by Mike Artell.  This book is fun to read because it's written with a Cajun dialect.  I read it as best I could, and I think the children enjoyed it!  The illustrations are beautiful and have many important details about the swamps and bayous of Louisiana. 

For our Picture Talk, we studied a photograph similar to the one below.  The children noticed the shapes of this vegetable when sliced.

Then we looked at the whole vegetable, and what it looks like when sliced a different way.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We started our day by passing the Talking Fish.  We enjoyed hearing about how our friends celebrated Thanksgiving and what they did over the long weekend.  
We listened to a very special book that Tyler brought in today.  Tyler went to see Jan Brett and he brought her new book The Tale of the Tiger Slippers.  This book is set in India and is a retelling of the Middle Eastern folk tale "Abu Kassem's Slippers."  The story is about a tiger cub who is born into a poor family.  His mother makes him beautiful red slippers to keep his feet from getting hurt while he works.  The tiger discovers clay he can use to make bricks, and becomes wealthy by building with the bricks.  He continues to wear the red slippers, but then others question why he continues to wear the worn slippers when he is so wealthy.  Ask me to tell you what happens when the tiger tries to get rid of the slippers.  This is another beautifully illustrated book by Jan Brett who is not only an amazing artist, but one of the best storytellers for young children.
In math, we continued to work with geometric shapes. We worked on sorting shapes that were solid and shapes that were plane shapes.  We are focusing on rectangles, squares, circles, triangles and hexagons with the plane shapes, and using words such as sides, angles or corners and curve to describe the shapes. The solid shapes were are focusing on are cones, pyramids, cylinders, spheres, cubes and rectangular prisms, and are using words such as faces, edges, corners and points to describe the shapes.  
In reading, we read an informational text called What Do Plants Need?  We listened for words that were new to us and used context clues to determine their meaning.  We used not only the words but the photographs to help us find meaning.  We also listened to determine the author's purpose for writing the book, and his ideas and support his ideas.  We found the reasons in the text and photographs.  Ask me to tell you what plants need to grow.

Have a great evening!
​Miss Wolfe