Peacefulness

Yesterday was the 30th day of school!  Wow, that went fast!  It has been such a beautiful and sweet beginning of the year.  Such an incredibly delightful and amazing group of kiddos!

We began pulling our first Harmony card this week.  The card we read was Peacefulness.  I love the rich discussions the card brought to our morning meetings.  What does peacefulness mean?  How do we choose peacefulness?  How do we bring it within ourselves and to each other?  The children all had wonderful and insightful comments to share.  At the end of the day a couple of times a week, we share how we choose peacefulness during the day.  Yesterday, one child shared how he helped a friend that looked sad.  Another shared how he felt quiet and peaceful while we were reading.  And another shared how he helped a friend feel included in his game so that everyone felt peaceful.  YES!  My hope with these virtues cards is that it will create opportunities for us to connect more and witness how we are connecting with one another.  It will bring positive interactions and share with us all the wonderful virtues that are part of living in harmony.  I will let you know what card we pull next week in a class email.  Perhaps you will have opportunities to continue the conversations and focus at home!
 
Math
We have been having so much fun in math!  I love how everyone is really embracing ways to challenge themselves.  The older group (the younger group will begin this soon) has begun taking math vitamins.  That's right, a vitamin of math!  Sometimes we take vitamins to give our body a little extra nutrition to help us grow strong and full of energy.  Our brains like to grow strong and what better way than a weekly dose of a math vitamin (although it has been requested they get one every day, so we may be getting more in the future)!  These "vitamins" are math problems or puzzles that are challenging and take a good bit of thinking power to figure out.  Many different skills may be needed like trial and error, strategy, applying number knowledge, seeing patterns, or interpreting information to figure it out.  On Monday, we had our first vitamin and when one child solved it (after much figuring) she gave a big "Yippee! I did it!!!"  I love it!
 
We have all been working really hard with place value and adding numbers.  Some are working on recognizing and naming two-digit numbers (and adding single digit numbers)  while others are using base ten blocks to add two-digit numbers and others are practicing their mental math in adding two-digit numbers. Fun! Fun! Fun!
 
Literacy
Writing workshop has already produced some wonderful stories!  We have been creating story maps of books we read together to help us get a sense of all the parts of fiction stories.  There is a problems and a solution!  We have been exploring using a story map to help focus our stories and get our thoughts in order so when we go to write, we know where we are going!  
 
We had fun playing with idioms earlier this year and made our own feelings book. A couple of children had an idea for us to write a poem for our spider or spider web (just like in the book that inspired our ArtsWalk art).  Look for these on our wall soon!!  
 
We have begun our word sorts as part of our literacy centers. One group is learning about magic "e" while another is doing a quick review before we move on to when two vowels go walking.  Another group is working on consonant diagraphs.
 
Theme
Swoosh!  This week our focus in weather is the wind.  We have learned about how wind is made (experiment happening later this week!).  We have also explored Bearforts scale of wind and made our own wind gauge that helps us measure the wind.  We have started graphing the types of weather we experience at school and the temperature highs/lows.  It will be a fun way to explore different kinds of graphs!
 
Before we began our unit on weather, the kids shared what they already know about weather, what questions they have and how they want to learn about it.  They had such great ideas of ways we can learn about weather!  I can't want to make it happen!
 
So sorry for the lack pictures!  My computer is no longer working. :(  I had some great ones all downloaded and ready to go, but alas, the computer could not be revived.  

Make new friends, and keep the old!

Welcome back to another wonderful school year!  It looks like it is already shaping up to be a beautiful one, full of exciting discoveries and creative endeavors.  Our first week of school went by in a whirl, and this week we are settling down to our schedules and really becoming comfortable in our classrooms and with the other members of our community. 

Here are some highlights from the first week of school: 

Whee!

New friends on the playground

waiting for a turn on the swings

Climbing friends!

New games evolve

Round and round and round!

On Friday we got together with our new reading buddies for the first part of the year.  Together we made beautiful collaborative art!  

After all that art making, it was time to go outside to learn the boundaries where we can play...and of course, to play!!

What a great start to a new year!

Spring!

I love every part of the school year.  The Fall as we begin building our community together, creating agreements, and developing routines.  Winter as we are all cozy inside in the depths of exploring, learning and growing.  And then there is Spring. One of the many moments I love during this time of year is when the warm sunlight fills our library while children linger over their books.  It is such sweetness.  I step back for a moment and become truly aware of the amount of independence and responsibility that has developed over the year. We have grown SO much and it is SO beautiful.

This time of year also goes by toooo fast.  So much happening, wrapping up projects, starting new projects, end of the year projects, field trips, crazy week....Our days together are numbered and our year together is coming to an end and I want to hold on for a little bit longer!  I want to sloooow down time and linger in these last sweet, sweet moments together.

Math
Fractions were so fun!  Who knew math could be so tasty!  Our favorites were fractioning bananas and apples but describing our trail mix with fractions and eating them was pretty yummy, too! Not only did we have fun eating them but creating pictures with pattern blocks and finding their fractional value and designing our own "Beady Creatures" and describing them with fractions (i.e. 3/12 of the beads are sparkly purple) was fun, too. 

More recently, we have been playing with multiplications and for some seeing how counting by 2s, 5s and 10s and be so handy!  Others are practicing 3s and 4s while some work on double digit multiplication.  We are also exploring division a bit.  It is all about a fair share in our classroom.  We begin learning about division by sharing (i.e. cookies) and making a fair share between friends with manipulatives.  As the concept of division develops, we shift our perspective from sharing to grouping.  How many groups of 5 can we make from 30?  It has been so fun see the children who have been working with multiplication for a while really see and use that connection to help them with division. 

Literacy
Kur-plunk! Zoom! Onomatopoeias are filling our room!  We had fun learning about these interesting words and finding ways to use them in our Writing Workshop stories to bring a little spice to our writing.  We are noticing them in our own readings as well (check out our poster we have been adding to these past couple of weeks!). Onomatopoeias are everywhere!  Check out our favorites in a book we made in our classroom (along with our favorite similes). 

We have started playing with poetry again.  We wrote sweet little cinquain poems about May in honor of May Day.  We learned (or reviewed) adjectives and verbs to help us with this structured poetry form.  We look forward to playing with other poetry forms like shape poems and free form.  We will also investigate other types of words (adverbs and nouns) that will help us create pictures with our words.

Theme
We finally made it to Oregon!  Phew, what a long, dusty trip!  Keep a look out for you child's Pioneer book coming your way, filled will many of the things we learned and encountered on our travels on the Oregon Trail.

The time machine has now dropped us in 1950 onto the Calypso with Jacque Cousteau.  We have learned a bit about the life of Jacque, his love for the ocean, co-invention of the "aqua-lung" and his passion for protecting the ocean.  We will dive in to the ocean with Jacque Cousteau as our guide.  His deep love for the ocean will lead us in our own discoveries of what lies beneath and fuel our desires to continue his work in protecting our beautiful oceans.

We have already learned some interesting ocean facts and a bit about the top "sunlight" layer.  We are working on an animal study together of the sea otter.  As we ask questions and learn about different aspects of this cute marine mammal, children will gather ideas of how to go about their independent ocean animal research project. 

Check out the great time we had with the scuba divers!