It is day 2. Today we named ourselves the Wild White Tigers. We read a book about the Rainbow Goblins who steal the colors of the rainbow and fill their bellies with color. It is an extraordinary book. This is our jumping off place for the rainbow tracking we plan to do this year. Unplanned by us, a rainbow appeared in the sky on Tuesday evening when we had our back to school potluck. It was very auspicious. We will be exploring the topic of rainbows as well as "Raising Goats." Our baby goats (the kids) are due any day now. Here are some of our rainbow drawings/paintings from today.
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Today we had our first K-1 spelling bee. It was the final activity for "Bee Week." This week we wrote a bee mad lib, made beehive mobiles, fashioned beeswax bees, studied the workers, drones and queens, practiced all the yoga postures we know that begin with b, and observed bees in our herb garden. We baked honey sweet baklava cookie cups with local honey on Tuesday. For our independent study project, each student brought 4 or 5 objects that represent things they like to do with Mommy. For poetry month, we have been writing poems like this.... We happily met our visiting billy goat, Chevre, sadly said good bye to 3 hens who were eaten by raccoons, and experienced a day without electricity after the early morning storms on Wednesday (a bit grumpily). The owls also got to take the maiden voyage in our new school bus.
The Owls are preparing small group science projects. The motion group is making a short video. The magnet group has a slide presentation. The electricity group has an electric circuit game board and the Human Body group is working on a play. We have worked on our independent study projects as well. Each student is studying their mother as a Force that is with them. Above, a student shares objects that represent things she and her mother do together. The students each completed a book about their mom's favorite things this week. We will celebrate "Poem in my Pocket," day next week. Today we wrote poems for Earth Day. It was our first experience with using a rhyming dictionary. We worked on odds and evens, telling time and also wrote a book about cats. We planted our pizza garden last week. We have garlic chives, basil, tomatoes, and green peppers. We have had more than the usual number of upsets, so we are working with mindfulness daily. There are other ways to handle an upset than stomping off screaming (thank goodness.) Our current read aloud is Miss Piggle Wiggle's Magic. We made these little apple pies last week. Here are some pictures of our process. We have a new outside abacus in our spider porch outside classroom. Here are a few shots of outside math time. We had a field trip this week to the Science Mill. Here are a few pictures from our trip. We made new plans for our small group study projects and began our independent study projects ("My Mother Is A Force,") with our first research assignment...Mommy's favorite things. W e finished The BFG , and learned some new sight word games, but we spent a lot of time writing and illustrating pages for our school book. Our class did a mad lib about the Inside Outside School. The Owls enjoyed two days of forest school this week. It was amazing. We alternated between free unstructured exploration and group activities like weighing crystals, playing a new math game called NIM, read to self, and sound mapping. The birds serenaded us so beautifully. Here are some pictures from Monday and Tuesday and a video of us doing a mindfulness game called, "Breathe, Focus, Jump." On Wednesday we prepared our garden bed for planting by pulling weeds and adding compost. We also spent some time inside doing our usual centers, learning a few new games and exploring snap circuits. Good times! There has been a flurry of activity in our class. In math, Owls have been working with tens, hundreds and thousands. We've been adding all sorts of ways, and learning new math games like Mystery Number and Addition Bingo. Here is some of our work... In science Owls explored making cars move with pushes and pulls from magnets. We also discovered two water heaters on our campus that heat the water. We are learning about how wires bring electricity to our school from power plants and how currents of electrons flow through the wires. Owls have been doing a lot of reading, writing, alphabetizing, spelling and retelling in literacy. Monday we were making molasses cookies: before, during and after We read Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg this week. The ants are carrying sugar crystals back to the queen. We looked at sugar crystals in the microscope. We also illustrated the beginning, middle and end of the story. Below is a slide show of our work. Exploring Science this week: We have been exploring forces with hands on materials, just figuring out how to make things work. Here is another slide show: In math we have worked with trading base ten cards and adding numbers in the thousands as well as doubling and tripling numbers using the math balance. For Valentine's Day we made 3-D models of our beloved pig friend, Mercy Watson.
We played "Race to a Quarter" this week in math and worked with telling time to the half hour as well as to the hour. I think the kinders have maxed out with time for now, but money is still very interesting. In literacy we added an activity called silly sentences. It was a lot of fun! Below is a slide show of their work. We had visitors in our class this week, which was a lot of fun! We had sit spot with the animals, focusing on how they move. We noticed how the chickens pick up their feet, how the goats have stiff back legs when they walk, and how Maybelline's ears went back when the chickens got behind her and forward when she was looking at the children. This was part of our exploration of force and motion. We are learning some vocabulary in relation to force and motion, push, pull, energy, work, friction and inertia.
Our big word was "WHERE." Did you know that here is hidden in where? Two of our reading groups are working primarily with silent e/long vowels and the third group worked with short e words. Our students are turning into readers! As you can imagine, there is a lot more to tell, but that is a snapshot of the Owl kingdom. We wrapped up our skeleton project this week by constructing skeletons with rocks and sticks in collaborative groups. We also now have a foam skeleton puzzle in our science center. We have had a few new activities in our literacy and math centers this week: sensory box spelling, phonics phone reading, clothespin and tile spelling, play store and whiteboard money matters. We finished setting goals in preparation for IQ meetings. In math we have investigated time and money. Many of the students have set math goals in relation to time and money. Monday we spent most of the day learning outside and many of the students got to go into the creek....in January! Wednesday we made buckwheat pancakes and strawberry syrup. We worked with these three fractions, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. We have read four books this week about our small group study project topics. We learned about germs, red and white blood cells, friction and inertia, how north and south poles of magnets attract, but south and south repel, and how only metal with iron in it will be attracted by a magnet. We also looked at some equipment we will use to create circuits that will light up bulbs. Our big word was "very." It was a very good week.
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November 2019
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