Friday Update Feb 29 to March 4

Friday, March 4, 2016

It has been another wonderful week of learning! We have had a special visitor, reconnected with Mango and Jelly, were cloud watching and continued concentrating on letters and numbers in our environment.

Our explorations and activities included…

*Daniel’s mom came in and created sand art with us! The kiddos had so much fun doing it, and created beautiful colored sand layers in a jar they took home.

*Our mark making area has continued to be popular!  Thank you so much for sending in envelopes, paper, stickers….I found many of my childhood things I collected to add to this area, and it has been fun shopping!  If you have envelopes especially to send in, these are a favorite!!!

*We continued exploring clouds, and went out with clipboards, as well as using many different materials to recreate our cloud observations.  See the blog for more details on our cloud explorations. (It is in 2 parts)

*Many of you sent in recycled materials to add to our maker-space—the cuties were so into this as well!!!  We had binoculars, bird feeders, pencil holders….you name it!  All being created with recycled materials!

*We made our March calendar

*We practiced a lot with our letters and numbers this week, and will continue with this. When you see numbers, letters and words in the environment around you, be sure to point them out to your child.

*We reconnected with Mango and Jelly!  We cuddled them, fed them, brushed them, drew pictures for them, wrote letters to them and told them how special they are to us!  This related very well to our talks about kindness and respect.  As a class we have really been working on being “bucket fillers” and being kind to our friends, bringing our yelling voices down to quiet friendly voices, and respecting people, animals and our environment. Let your child tell you about our kindness candle time, and be sure to take a quick moment to praise your cutie when they are being kind. J

REMINDERS/IMPORTANT DATES

Friday, March 11^th: Field Trip to Elephant and Piggie. *FIELD TRIP FORMS ARE COMING HOME TODAY—You can keep the first page, please sign and return the second page.  If the info on that page is not correct, write in on the page for me, but also go into the SAS website and change the information (it means you haven’t updated it.) I can’t go in and do that. We will be leaving the school that day at 8:20 and returning around 11:30. Please pack a normal snack for that day (and lunch if your child does home lunch.) There are no chaperones for the trip.

Thursday, March 17^th and Friday, March 18^th: PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES.  Our students do not come to the conferences and do not have school these two days. *If you would like to talk to Ma Laoshi about Chinese, please sign up on her schedule (the same page that my sign up is on.) Ms. Laura’s is also there, however she is away for the conference days and will be doing her meetings on a different day.

March 19^th to March 27^th:  SPRING BREAK: NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS

*Please return the red library bag and books and the blue Friday Folder bag on Monday!!

Cloud Explorations!

“Hey Guys! There is a cloud in the sky that looks like Gerald the Elephant!”

My son Lukas gave us our provocation for learning early Monday morning. The students are obsessed with Mo Willem’s Elephant and Piggie books, and to hear that something looked like Gerald the Elephant was very exciting! The whole class ran outside to the playground courtyard straining to see this cloud!

The students started pointing out all sorts of shapes and images they saw in the clouds, and asked if we could stay out and look for more clouds. We decided to go to a wider, more open space, and headed to the field. Some of us lay down on the grass, some sat and some stood.

“The clouds are moving across the sky really really fast!” –Ella

“I think there are planes up there too!” –Jimmy

“Look!  There is Gerald the Elephant again!  And I think I see Piggie!” –Liam

“Look over there!” (pointing) “That cloud looks like a Christmas tree!” –Map

“It’s actually a white cat.” –Dylan

“I see so many different things…a dog, a boat, an elephant…” –Daniel

 “Let’s see if the clouds look different on the other side of the field!” –Xavion

All of the students ran back and forth across the field to get different viewpoints of the sky and the clouds.

Many of the students decided they wanted to make clouds out of different materials so we looked around the classroom to see what we could use to represent them.  There were so many suggestions, and the students tried out different things.

“Let’s use fluffy snow like we did at Christmas! It is white!” –Aria

“I think it has to feel puffy.” –Jasper (We found the shaving cream.)

“I’m just going to draw them and add the words Mom and Dad so I can tell them about what we saw.” –Si-Yoon

“Or we could build the shapes with the blocks.” –Hudson

Friday Update and Pictures Feb 22 to 26

It has been a fantastic first week back with my cuties! After an absolutely wonderful maternity leave, these kiddos have been so much fun to reconnect with!  Hugs have been plentiful!  Clouds and color have led our discussions and learning this week.

Our other explorations and activities included…

*creating a “Mark Making” area.  This area has many writing instruments, different kinds of paper, envelopes, stickers, scissors, letters, and ideas for writing.  It has been the most popular place in our classroom, with most of our cuties writing letters to moms and dads and friends, as well as drawing/writing stories! There was practicing of our own names and our friends’ names, our letters, numbers, and sounds, and we even used some of our high frequency words (To, Mom, Dad, Love.) It was so much fun that our kiddos didn’t even realize they were WRITING!

*investigating clouds (see the next blog post for more details-I will have that up in the next couple of days.)  We went out to the field, lay down on the grass and looked up at the sky and clouds.  (I used to love doing this as a child, and wanted these guys to experience it.)  We then of course had to run the field!

*the cloud investigations continued with making pretend snow into some of the shapes we saw in the sky, and using shaving cream to recreate the beauty we saw!

*I brought in some new Elephant and Piggy books and our kiddos were completely captivated---many of the students can read some of the books we have had in the classroom, as we have read them a lot of times together.  Feel free to take one of these from the library and have your child help you read it—you will be amazed at what they know.

*we played number games to review our numbers, especially our “tricky teen” numbers and then played number Bingo

*we read one of my favorite books Black Cat and White Cat, and then recreated some of the pages using black and write paper.  The cuties had some amazing ideas.

REMINDERS/IMPORTANT DATES

Friday, March 11^th: Field Trip to Elephant and Piggie. Details and permission forms to come soon.

Thursday, March 17^th and Friday, March 18^th: PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES.  Our students do not come to the conferences and do not have school these two days.

March 19^th to March 27^th:  SPRING BREAK: NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS

*Please return the red library bag and books on Monday.

Have a great weekend! Lynsey J