News from the Marvelous Martians

Important dates:

February 3rd: Parent Meeting

February 4th: all day field trip to Pacific Science Center

A Bit of Everything:

Our space travels have come to an end. We are sad to say goodbye to space explorations, but really excited for our upcoming trip to the rainforest! Yippee! We spent some time thinking and writing about all of the things we wonder and would like to learn about the rainforest. We are curious to know how much it rains in a rainforest, if there are cities in the rainforest, what kind of animals live in the rainforest, if there are any endangered animals in the rainforest, if people live there, if there are rivers...Wow! We should have lots of fun exploring!

Letters, letters, letters! We continue practicing our beautiful uppercase letter and have begun learning lower case letters! We've been working with chalk boards, clay, wooden blocks and good old paper and pencils to practice our strokes.

This week we are integrating our work with handwriting into many aspects of the curriculum. In math we are looking at the shapes of letters, as well as the strokes used to make them. What do the letters B, Q and R have in common? They are all made with both straight lines and curves! However this is not true for all letters. Some have just straight lines, and some just curves. We created Venn Diagrams to contrast and compare the capital letters in this way.

What do the letters O, R and A have in common? They all have interior regions! We looked at each letter and tried to imagine it as a fence. The ones with interior regions did a great job containing our dog, and the others, well...ooops! We had a fun time guessing whether our dog would spend more time roaming the neighborhood or right at home in our yard!

We added a bit of color to our handwriting lessons, as we used our best handwriting to create color-blocked water colors of our names. For some of us, the project also included the component of learning to spell our last names (or even what are last names were:). These are bright and vivid and add some wonderful color to our classroom, in the midst of our gray winter! Check these out on the closet doors!

After learning a basic definition of a rainforest, we again practiced our best handwriting to write the word rainforest and then decorated it in a way that would illustrate the definition. There were snakes for S's and monkeys swinging from A's!

New "Math Packs" have arrived! Our new packs include collection of worksheets that focus on vertical addition and subtraction, and missing parts equations for the ferns and a variety of addition and subtraction worksheets for the suns. Believe it or not the kids really enjoy these and frequently ask for more time to work on them! The worksheets are a nice way to solidify and demonstrate an understanding of the concepts we practice in our daily math games.

Speaking of games we learned a couple new ones this week! Suns learned a new game called Six in All. For this game each player has an assortment of cards numbered 1-6. The object is to pick pairs or groups of cards that total 6. For instance you may pick 4 and 2 or 3, 2, and 1. After making all the groups that you can, you record the resulting equations.

Ferns learned a new version of an old game. Rolling doubles now has an added twist! After rolling and doubling the number on the die, you must roll a second die with -2, -1, +1, +2 on it and do the math in your head. You might have to solve something like double 4 then subtract 2 or double 5 and add 1. You then place a chip on the corresponding number on your board, ultimately trying to get 5 in a row (although many prefer to play for total blackout of the board!).

We are almost to the halfway point of the year! Today was the 88th day of school! You may remember seeing at Fall conferences a sample of your child╒s writing that was collected at the beginning of the year for assessment purposes. This week I collected another sample. For theses samples students write completely independently about a chosen topic╤this time it was to write about a trip you╒ve taken. Feel free to ask if you╒d like to see the current sample compared to the earlier one.

Phonics groups this week focused on all short vowels, long o vowel patterns, long o and short o, and gr, tr, pr and dr. Groups sorted picture or word cards and then wrote sentences using as many words as they could (some of these were quite silly!) or practiced sounding out and writing words being sure to include a short vowel.

Reading groups focused on comprehension, making predictions and reading aloud fluently and with expression; predicting what a hidden word may be using only the first letter, the picture and the rest of the sentence as our clues; learning to put sounds together to form words; and trying to recognize a word as it appears multiple times in a story.

Jacob has inspired and lead us in learning new yoga poses this week! He has lent us a wonderful children's yoga book and we╒ve been making time each day to learn some new poses. Today I overheard someone commenting to a friend, "I can't wait 'til it's time for yoga!" Our new poses for today were the crooked branch and rainbow poses! Ask your child for a demonstration!

It's the Shocking Sugar Gliders!

Friday Workshops
Friday, January 29th
Claire
Owen

Important Dates
Friday, January 29th - Swimming in the morning
Thursday, February 4th - Field trip to Seattle
Friday, February 12th - Valentine's Day party
February 15th-19th - No School

Swimming!

We are having so much fun swimming on Fridays! This last week I stayed out of the pool and I had a wonderful time watching the children and observing all of their play and interactions. There are children practicing their jumps into the pool or tricks like standing on their hands or doing somersaults. Some are playing with water toys or practicing diving, floating, or swimming. Others continue their imaginative play as seals, dolphins, or sharks. What I enjoyed most was watching the older children play with the youngers by giving them rides on their backs around the pool or pulling them around while the youngers practiced kicking their legs. These sweet moments gives me a deep appreciation for our school's commitment to multi-age experiences and the lessons everyone receives, be it learning how to do something, asking for support from a friend, or the joy of helping/teaching/giving to another.

Math

We continue playing math games that help us practice our multiplication. One game we played this week was "Concentration." This game is much like Memory in that we needed to match up equations with the answer while remembering what cards we already turned over and where they were!

We have begun looking at multiplication geometrically by creating rectangles on grid paper (our floor tiles). For example, when playing "Floor Tiles" we roll a die and that is how many rows our tile will be. We roll again and this how many squares will be in each of our rows. If I rolled a three and then a two, I would create a rectangle that is three rows high and contain two squares across (3 x 2) which covers 6 squares. Working with grids and thinking about multiplication geometrically helps the children create another picture in their mind of multiplication. We will continue this work next week with a special guest! Hmmmmm...I wonder who that could be? Hint: She smells of gumdrops and Jeriann always hides from her!

Look in our room for our beautiful multiplication designs! We used multiplies and our eye for patterns to create these amazing works of art.

Language

We began our week with words sorts. Some worked on beginning blends like "br, cr, gr, and tr" while some practiced the ending sound "dge, ge." Others worked on "ie, ee" and some practiced "air, are." Our wonderful word sorts allow the children to practice sounds and spelling patterns that are developmentally appropriate for where they are as a learner. At least half of your child's spelling words for the week come from the word sorts.

Some children began book clubs this week. One group is reading The Cat Who Wished to be a Man. We are all enjoying the book immensely which is making it a bit of a challenge for us to keep our pinkie promise to not read past our agreed amount (although we are keeping our promise)! We have read the first five chapters independently and together practiced writing short summaries and predictions in our book club folders. We also practiced thinking of questions that require deeper thinking and allow us to synthesize, evaluate, or investigate the text further. Next week we will prepare this work independently before we meet and then share and discuss with the group. We will practice taking notes on the main characters, secondary characters, setting, and theme.

Another group began reading Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion. We are reading this book aloud to one another and sharing our thoughts and question verbally. Others continue to practice reading with our readers like Aesop's Fables and reading without picture clues.

***There is a new addition to homework this week! We will begin our literature responses in February. All the details are in your child's homework binder.***

Theme

Goodbye space and hello rainforests! We are all VERY excited about rainforests. The list of topics we are interested in learning about include tigers, cocoa pods, poisonous frogs, plants, peoples of the rainforest, weather, fruits, tigers, birds, sloths.....the list goes on and on!

We will now answer to the the name of Shocking Sugar Gliders. I had no idea what a sugar glider was (I thought it was an insect!) until the children showed me this cute picture.

Shockingly cute!

News from the Moon Toons!

Friday Workshops

January 22nd

Oliver

Jack

January 29th

Claire

Owen

Reminders

Friday, January 22nd - Swimming in the morning!

Friday, January 29th - Last swimming field trip

Thursday, February 4th - All day trip to Seattle Science Center

Math

We continue our work with multiplication and practicing our facts by playing a few games. We have Tic-Tac-Toe with a Twist and BINGO this week. Children choose what level to work on by the board they decide to play. For example, a younger may choose to work on the 2's facts and use the 2 Tic-Tac-Toe board. An older who has had more experience working with multiplication may choose the 8 or 9 board. And then there is everyone in between! The same is true for BINGO and future games. These games are fun, provide practice in learning multiplication concepts and facts, and everyone can play at their own level.

Language

On Tuesday we thought about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his life. After reading about his life's work we thought about a few important words like peace, diversity, freedom, justice, inclusion, dream, liberty, and leadership. We each took a word and found the definition in the dictionary (great dictionary practice!). We recorded the definition and wrote a response about what the word means to us and our lives. Look for your child's response on our door!

We also watched a short video about MLK's march on Washington and his dreams. MLK's commitment to peace and non-violence, even when there was so much violence happening around him and to him, impressed us all. We thought about how important it is to have dreams and the amazing work that can be accomplished when someone dedicates themselves to their dream. We wrote our own dreams in the style of his speech. The dreams are beautiful - yay to our future leaders!!!

The end of our journey through space has brought us all to a new planet! Yes, we have each found a new planet that has life forms! We are using our most descriptive words to describe the planet and the life form. We also need to think like scientists and make sure our facts seem believable and our life forms fit with their habitat. We will think about details, such as how our life form has adapted to the planets habitat and how long it takes for the planet to rotate on it's axis.

Theme

We finally made our sextants! We ran out of time last week so we had fun this week using our new tool and practicing this form of measurement. We found as we walked closer to a high distant object the degrees increased.

And our study of stars could not be complete without a look at a well-known artist's painting of stars....Van Gogh! We will learn about his life and work and his unique style of painting, especially stars, and then paint our own version of a "Starry night."

News from the Marvelous Martians

We've had a fun week! We've deviated a bit from our normal routines, adding some new elements...all in all its been quite enjoyable.

Math

Our work with subtraction continues in Math. We learned some new games...grab bag subtraction, subtraction 5 in a row, and subtraction bowling (who knew this could be so fun!). Some of these are new and others are twists on all familiars. Subtraction 5 in a row is similar to BINGO, although you are subtracting two numbers to see where to place a chip. In subtraction bowling we are creating equations based on the number of pins knocked down...as you can imagine this was a big hit!

I am blown away to see the equations the kids are able to create each day in morning circle. I create things like __+__+__-__-__=10. The kids need to fill in the blanks to create a true equation! This has become a favorite element of morning circle, with many asking for more and more equations! We spent one day this week working on entire pages of these equations! WOW!

Language Arts

Have you ever had a time when you're doing something and thought to yourself, "Wow! This would make a great story?" We are practicing catching these moments and tucking them away in our pockets, so that when writing workshop comes around our pockets will be full of ideas! You might help your child catch some ideas! When we pull these stories out of our pockets, we are practicing using our fingers to tell stories with beginning, middles and ends. We continue to work with partners to plan our daily writing.

We are very lucky to have Sandra (Ella's Mom) coming to teach us handwriting! She is teaching us to make letters using four basic strokes, a simplistic, hands-on and wonderful approach (I am really enjoying learning alongside the kids!). We've been using wooden blocks, chalkboards, play dough and of course, paper and pencils! The goal is to make writing less laborious, as well as to help kids neaten up their writing. Thanks Sandra!

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we did some thinking (and writing) about our own dreams for our families, our school and the world. Check out these profound thoughts...they will be up on display soon!

Theme

Comets and constellations have been the focus this week. We learned the parts of a comet and made our very own comets, using aluminum foil and ribbon. What fun it has been to fly these in the gym!

We are perplexed by the fact that the constellations don't really look like the objects they represent! Hmmm....And how do you know exactly which stars to look for when you could see that shape in many places in the sky?

Each child has picked a constellation to focus on. Be sure to ask your child what he or she picked! These are all constellations that can be seen in the Northern Hemisphere, so you might even try locating it i we have a clear night! So far we have made images of our constellations using stars, and sketches with a bit of imagination and colored pencils. Next week we'll work on learning the stories of our constellations and will finally teach our friends about all that we've learned!

Investigations

We've had a bit of choosing time in the classroom this week, but we've also spent some time playing group games in the gym, as well as creating peace doves in honor of MLK day...look for these in the window next to the door!

Have a wonderful long weekend everyone! Remember no school on Monday!

Moon Toons News!

Friday Workshops
January 15th
Maggi
Sequoia

Important Dates
January 15th - Swimming in the morning!
January 18th - MLK Day - No School
February 3rd - Parent Meeting
February 12th - Half Day (School out at 12:00)
February 15-19 - Mid-Winter Break
February 24th/25th - Snowshoe Trip!!!!

Math
2,4,6,8... or how about 9,18, 27, 36....

Continuing our work with preparing for multiplication we have created a few tools to help us. Skip counting is very helpful in practicing multiplication. We all feel comfortable counting by 5s and 10s but are a little unsure about 3s and 4s and especially 8s and 9s once we get past the first two or three numbers. We practiced using our "gems" which are beaded rods that hold the number we are counting by. For example, if I need help figuring out what three groups of four is I can grab three of the "fours" rods to help me. We also created a chart that shows skip counting from 2s to 10s.

Everyone practiced counting by a certain number by creating a dot to dot that used skip counting to connect the dots. Some practiced their 2s or 4s while others practiced 6s or 8s. And finally everyone will create a "Planet of Numbers" where everything on the planets is a multiple of a certain number. Look for these on our wall!

Language
We just couldn’t stop doing alliterations until we wrote one for every letter in the alphabet! Be sure to check out our very special book in our room. Everyone continues to work on their individual stories in Writing Workshop. It is great to watch and help the children in different stages of their story writing. From brainstorming ideas and planning, to writing and editing work that is appropriate for that child, to creating the cover and putting the final staples in and sharing during Author’s Chair or Partner Share, they are independently taking responsibility of the writing process and doing it so confidently!

We have taken a break from Centers since Winter Break and have been working on special projects like our alliterations. Another project we did this week was create our own constellations and write a myth about how our constellation came to be in the sky. We have constellations ranging from a spider web constellation put up by a scientists to a Santa’s sack constellation put up by Santa to remind everyone of Christmas spirit.

Theme
Earlier this week we practiced remembering facts that we have learned about the planets and space in a "Planet Game Show." It was great fun and I was so impressed with everyone’s ability to recall answers to the questions so quickly! We have learned so much!

We turned our attention to the stars this week. We learned a few constellations and copied some of our favorites into our own constellation "burst" book (which the kids have decided can also open and hang). "What’s your sign?" has become a common question this week as we also learned a bit about astrology. Check out our chart on the wall to see what signs we have in the Moon Toons! Do you think we have more water, fire, air or earth signs?

We will end our week with building our own sextant (an instrument used by sailors). Since we won’t be able to measure the height of the North Star, we will practice using our instrument on the highest things we can find at school.

As we near the end of our journey through space, we have begun thinking about what we would like to learn next. We started a list of topics we are interested in and will continue to add ideas over the next week. Hmmmm.... I wonder what we will study next?!

Welcom back Moon Toons!

Field Trips
Through the month of January our Friday field trips will be in the morning at YMCA. Please have your child wear his or her swimsuit to school and bring a towel (and goggles if desired).

January 18th - No School - MLK DAY!!

February 4 – All day field trip to the Pacific Science Center.

Workshops
January 8
Cedar
Kat

January 15
Maggi
Sequoia

January 22
Jack

January 29
Oliver
Claire

Math
There are three spiders. Each has 8 legs. How many legs in all? One could solve this problem using addition or they could use multiplication. We are exploring the connection between the two to help us delve further into the realm of multiplying. We each made a page that illustrated using a number in multiplication. We counted by that number, made a T chart, added the number up a certain number of times, and showed how to write it using multiplication. The work is up on our wall – check it out!

We will end the week playing “Circles and Stars” with a partner. This game help us with the idea of sets (groups) of numbers. If I rolled a three I would draw three circles. If I then rolled a two I would draw two stars in each circle. That means I have 3 sets of two or 3 X 2. We will also do “Pattern Block Times Table” where we build a picture with pattern blocks (using between 2-10 blocks) and then continue building the picture again and again on top. For example, let’s say I build a picture of a cat using three blocks. One cat is equal to three or 1 X 3 =3. I then build another cat on top using three more blocks. I now have two cats using six blocks so, 2 X 3 =6,etc...

Language
Animalist alliterations are awesome and amazing! Yes, we are playing with alliterations this week. We were inspired by a book written by a girl right here in Washington who wrote such creative alliterations and spent so much time creating quality artwork that she had it published! We are making our own book of alliterations so keep your eye out!

Many of us were in the middle of stories when we left for break. So, we reread our stories to refresh our memories and are back in writing mode. Partner sharing at the end of our writing time as become quite the favorite!

We will finish the week with our word sorts and picking our spelling words.

Theme
Our travels through space is nearing its end. We spent this week reviewing what we know about the true planets and comparing them. What planet is the coldest, hottest, biggest, and smallest? Ask your child!

In small groups we learned about asteroids, meteoroids, and comets. Each group was responsible for researching and learning about their given topic. Together they decided what the most important facts were, how they would design their poster, and who would do what job. Each group became experts on their topic and then shared their poster with the class. It was great practice in working together as a group!

We have done other group activities this week that have given us an opportunity to look at how groups work (or don’t work). After an activity we reflect (like we were a fly on the ceiling watching the group) on how the group worked. What was challenging? How did we feel? What were we doing to help (or not help)? How does it feel when our ideas are ignored? How can we acknowledge every idea and include everyone? We all love working in a group but we all also face challenges. It has been good for us to discuss these issues and brainstorm how to respond when these challenges occur. Life long lessons!

***Homework routine returns this Thursday!!***

A Week with the Marvelous Martians...

Important Dates and Reminders

January 8, 15, 22 and 29 (every Friday in January): swimming at the YMCA. Please wear swimsuits to school, but bring a complete change of clothes including a towel. If your child has a "Y" membership please send it to school with your child so that we do not have to pay for admission!

Friday Workshops:
January 8th:
Seth: how to make a book
Kainoa: making things out of clay

Math
SUBTRACTION! SUBTRACTION! SUBTRACTION! We have all begun investigating subtraction this week! Some of us are having our first experience with this new idea and practice writing subtraction signs and subtraction equations, playing games that reinforce the idea that subtraction means "taking things away", and learn different methods for solving subtraction equation. Other's revisiting this topic review a variety of strategies they use to solve subtraction equations and learn a new subtraction game (Grab Bag Subtraction). And the moment everyone has been waiting for (really the kids are asking for these!)...we will be putting our skills to the test as we work on some new subtraction worksheets!

Language Arts
What did you do over Winter Break? We were all so excited to see one another after Winter Break and to share stories of our time apart (so excited, in fact, that we could hardly stop talking!)...so we are using this inspiration to capture our adventures in writing during Writing Workshop! This week we focused on leaving spaces between our words and on planning our writing for the day with a partner. After trying out the partner planning, everyone agreed that it helped them to be a more directed writer when they went to the table to begin writing. I agree! Not even once did I hear "I don't know what to write about!"

Our phonics groups this week focused on: short o, qu wh tw and tr gr pr dr. Each group sorted picture cards into categories and recorded their findings with pictures and writing.

Reading groups will be focusing on: sounding out words/ pointing to words as they are read, practicing recognizing sight words, and forming connections between what we read and our lives. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE bring DEAR bags to and from school everyday! Each time the bag is brought to school the books will be replaced with new books at an appropriate level. Please make time for reading each night! Thank you!

Our phonics work continues to be interwoven throughout our week with quick games like Sound Hunt (I give them a sound and they have to find something in the room that starts with the sound) and Honey in the Pot (similar to Hangman minus the hanging man:).

Theme
We officially wrapped up our study of the planets by looking at the planets as a whole and comparing and contrasting many of their features...

Asteroid, Meteoroid, Meteorite and Meteors...we are working on learning the differences bewtween these space objects! It can be quite confusing, though fortunately we now have our very own books, complete with pictures and definitions to help us tell the difference! We also created posters in small groups of each of the objects and experimented making prints of these objects with an unexpected material! Take a look at these and see if you can guess what we used!

Stars are next on the horizon! Our week will wrap up with an art project with our Moon Tune buddies that explores the life and colors of stars!

Investigations
We are mixing things up! I noticed many students choosing to play with the same friends at the same activities for many days, so I decided that we would spend the first 10 minutes of each investigations time mixing things up a bit...this entails me choosing groups to play together at given activities! Our first experience with this was very positive, and many kids chose to stay at their activity longer than required! My hope is that this will allow kids to develop some new social skills as they play with friends they may not play with so often and that they will also have a chance to experience some new activities.