OCS Newsletter

Happy New Year!

2012-01-11T18:08:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012!! Before Winter Break we had fun learning about a couple of Winter holidays (Solstice, Kwanzaa, and Bodhi Day). The flowers above are from a Bodhi Day activity. We made beautiful lotus flowers to look at while we meditated in honor of the Buddha reaching enlightenment. Ahhh...

Thank you all for a wonderful Portfolio Share Day! The children were all so excited to share with you everything they have done this year and show off how much they have grown. Yay!!

Math
Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters...we've been counting them all! We have been playing so many games (matching game, money in the bank, pay the bills, two-coin game, clean up the money...) to help us learn and practice counting coins. It has been great practice in putting our counting by tens and fives to practical use! Olders worked more with quarters and everyone practiced adding on, counting the highest coins first, adding the next amount, until finally adding the pennies (25, 35, 45, 50, 55, 60, 61, 62, 63 cents!). Our final task was to each add up the coins we needed to pay our individual bill for our Ecuadorian feast!

We ended our unit on money with learning about Moon Jars and creating our own jars to save, spend and share our money. It was great to hear from the kids their ideas of the kinds of things they may save up for, what they might spend some money on, and how they could share with others, too.

This week we have been practicing counting by twos. We had fun thinking of things that come in two (earrings, shoes, nostrils...). We will visit multiplication again (2s table) and practice counting by two's with different games and ways of counting (yesterday we had fun pounding the table two times for every number we said...thump, thump, 2!, thump thump, 4!...).

Moon Jars

Literacy
In Writing Workshop, we have been busy becoming our own editors of our writing. With editor glasses on and checklist in hand, each child goes through and checks for capitals and periods, lowercase letters, and if it all makes sense. As the year continues, the checklist will evolve with the children's writing. They are taking their job as editor very seriously (it's what all authors must do with their stories) before they publish and share their books.

Spelling is up and running again! Expect to see a list of new words every Monday! The source of our words will be from our word sorts of the week or any high frequency words from our own writing or the word wall.

In reading workshop, we are learning different reading strategies that will help our comprehension, accuracy, or fluency while reading. Watch our wall of strategies grow and our readers, too!

We enjoyed reviewing the sounds and playing mouth charades (making the vowel sound with our mouth -no sound - and friends guessing the vowel). We have been using mirrors to help us or feeling our mouth position with our fingers to help us identify the vowel sound when writing words. We also had lots of fun acting out the stories of babysitters. How does "c" feel when left alone with a baby "a"? A little nervous but luckily friendly "k" offers to help! (_ack) Phew! Or what about when "l" is left with a baby "e"? Uh-oh, "l" says, "I can't do this by myself!" Thankfully "l" has a wonderful twin that will help! (_ell). These stories have been wonderful in helping the kids learn different spelling patterns. We will continue to practice our word famlies for a bit longer as we focus on beginning blends.

Theme
The Galapagos Islands were so amazing! It was hard to leave, with so many interesting animals to learn about and get to know! Our final day in Ecuador was delicious with our feast of Ecuadorian tortillas, salsa, corn salad with papaya dressing, and dried bananas and mango - yum!

Ecuadorian Feast =Delicious!

This week we hiked up the Andes through some mountain villages to find a good river that will flow to the Amazon. We created pictures of what we saw and enjoyed reviewing our geometry terms and using the artistic skill of foreground, mid-ground, and background to add depth to our pictures.

Ecuadorian Mountain Village

As we canoe down the Amazon we are noticing how people live. It has been interesting to see the children living along the Amazon and how different their lives are from our own and in what ways they are the same.

Our trusty canoes!

We also made a list of animals we hope to see along the Amazon...pink river dolphins, piranhas, jaguars, sloths...fingers crossed we see a few!

Portfolio Share, 12/16

2012-01-04T05:23:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-27T12:22:00.001-08:00

I am so grateful to have my life's passion and work fulfilled so beautifully. Thank you all for your support and the honor of working with your children!

Math
We continue to work on our counting by 5s and practicing ways we use it in our daily lives. We have enjoyed playing with clocks and practicing how to read the time (knowing how to count by 5s is so helpful!!). We will move on from our focus on time but will keep a telling time activity as part of our morning calendar routine to keep us practicing (we will also revisit it again!). We have also begun counting groups of nickels to see how much cents we have. We will now move on to counting other coins and doing more work with money (along with our continued practice of addition). Although, before we can do this, I do believe Mistress Wonka is scheduled for a visit, oh boy!

Language
We continue our work with baby vowels and word families. Look for a change in spelling practice this week!

We all did a check in with sight words and it was so fun for the kids to see how many words they have learned to read since we started focusing on learning sight words! They have learned so many and grown so much! Everyone contines to grow stronger reading skills everyday. I know all the support and practice they get at home has helped them grow and be successful!

Kennedy Creek
What a wonderful trip! The kids were so excited to see the salmon in the creek and observe their spawning behavior. We were so lucky to see so many salmon displaying different parts of the spawning process...from fighting over a female to decomposing and adding nutrients to the soil.

Searching for salmon

Theme
We have left the country! After careful packing (only the ten most important things we will need for our trip), preparing our passports and getting our tickets, we were finally ready to say, "Buen viaje!" Most of our time in Ecuador will be spent exploring the incredible Galapagos Islands. We took an exploratory "tour" last week and saw some interesting and unique animals that can only be found on these islands. We took lots of pictures and samples to bring back to the ship to study further. We will create a guide book of the animals we find, so look forward to seeing these as we learn more about the fauna of the Galapagos.

Ready to board!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! We spent some time last week thinking of everything that we are thankful for in our lives...here are a few examples...

Be sure to check out our Thankful tree in our classroom!

ORCAS AT OCS written by Brett's Class

2011-11-16T13:07:00.001-08:00

On November 10th, Jeff Hogan, founder and director of "Killer Whale Tales", came to OCS to teach us about killer whales and how to protect them. He used storytelling, slides, and asked questions to show us what we can do to help orcas. He taught us the sounds that different orca pods (like J,K, and L) make. He gave us trading cards if we could identify the different whale soounds. Somwe ways to protect the orcas are to use less electricity, not to pollute water with fertilizer, and to protect their food (like salmon). We enjoyed the visit and we learned a lot.

Apples, Salmon and Orcras, Oh My!

2011-11-14T20:10:00.001-08:00

It has been such a beautiful Autumn! One of the many things that I appreciate during this time of year is the sweet music of the children singing our Autumn songs. We have been singing twice a week with our younger friends and helping them learn the words. We are now also singing once a week with our older friends. Plan on hearing a concert of our favorite songs in December!

Math

We continue our work with addition facts, adding three or four numbers, or adding double digits through games and practice sheets. Block It is a fun game that involves giving the pattern blocks value. Each time a block is added, the child gets to add up the value of all the blocks that it is touching. Getting the biggest number possible is the goal, so it is fun to use some strategy.

Block It

We have also begun working with counting by 5s. We have been counting our number of days of school by 5s, passing our little pumpkin in our circle and counting by 5s as fast as we can, and playing games like the Swiper game. To play, a child puts out all the cards from 5 to 100 in order by 5s. Another child swipes a card but moves the other cards together so there isn't a hole giving away the missing card. The other child (who wasn't looking) needs to figure out what card was taken.

5s Swiper Game

We are now playing with recording and adding multiply groups of 5. It has been fun to step into the world of multiplication! We have played Tic-Tac-Toe with a Twist and Circles and Stars. Both give us experience in counting by 5s to solve multiplying situations. For example, for 3x5 a child will think/say that it is three groups of 5 so 5, 10, 15...15 is the answer!

This week, now that we can all count by 5s so well, we will begin looking at the clock and learning how to read the time. Learning to read the clock takes time and lots of practice. Having a analog clock at home or a watch is a great way to get more practice. FUN!

Literacy
We continue with our study of baby vowels with "u" being our focus this week. We are becoming pros at word sorts and learning other games to help us read and spell word families. This week we learned "Shake a Sound" which involves shaking a carton that determines a rime (12 options, for example, _unk, _ump, _ock...) and the child then uses their sound board of beginning consonants and blends to determines what onset will create a word.

Joann (John's mom) has been a wonderful helper on Mondays during our literacy centers. She is currently running a center that helps the children work with word families and changing beginning or ending sounds to great new words. Thank you so much for your help, Joann!

I hope you have been enjoying the word sort practice at home as well as the beginning of our spelling! The "Blind Sort" is a fun way to practice and learn the spelling patterns we are focusing on in class. For the time being, our spelling list will continue to focus on sight words or high frequency words.

In Writing Workshop, we are all making sure to put spaces between our words, We have begun building our writing tool kits to help us with our writing. First tool, a "Space Girl/Boy" who helps remind us to put nice space between our words (they need some space!!). The kids have really enjoyed using the tool. I love it when they use it and pull it out for writing times even when it's not Writing Workshop!

Word Sorts

Theme
We are wrapping up our time in Washington. After learning that our state fruit is the apple, we just had to have an apple feast! I gathered up as many different varieties of apples I could find and we enjoyed a taste-testing session of the different varieties. Yum!

Washington Apple Tasting

Living in the Puget Sound, a look at Washington would not be complete without a closer look at salmon and Orcas. We have learned about the life cycle of the salmon (everyone was especially drawn to the little alevin with their big "yolk" bellies) and the 4 C's salmon must have to survive. See if your child remembers them (clean water, cool water, clear water, and consistent water).

We had to know a bit about Orcas because who knows, we might see a pod as we travel out the Puget Sound and into the Pacific Ocean! We are prepared with I.D. cards and a bit of knowledge, thanks to our friends at Killer Whale Tales.

We are leaving for Ecuador THIS week!!

Art
We are enjoying the colors autumn brings us and have been incorporating them into our artwork. Check out our beautiful fall leaves we created with oil pastels.

Field Trips and Special Guests
At the end of October, we were invited to dig up all the potatoes in the garden for donation to the food bank. Wow! It was like digging for treasure! The kids had so much fun finding big potatoes, small, potatoes, and every other shaped potato. Yay, potatoes!

Potatoes!

Last week, I invited Killer Whale Tales for a visit to share their work and study of the resident Orca pods. I was sad to miss out that day, but I have enjoyed hearing all about it from the kids. I hope they shared it all with you, too!

47 Days of School!

2011-11-11T06:15:00.001-08:00

Theme
Our studies of Washington state would not be complete without a unit on salmon! We've had lots of fun learning about the life cycle of salmon, even though many of us felt pretty sad about the fact that baby salmon (otherwise known as alevin) never get to meet their parents. We created life cycle games, used puppets to demonstrate the life cycle and acted out the life cycle pretending we were salmon! It was hard work swimming upstream, especially since we were no longer eating! Perhaps if asked your child will give you a special performance! This coming week we will be creating some salmon inspired art and will actually get the opportunity to see spawning salmon first hand on our field trip to kennedy creek on Friday!

On Thursday, we had a fellow come from Killer Whale Tales to teach us all about Orcas! Jeff was AMAZING (he completely captivated all three classes for a total of 2 hours!)! We learned about the work he does and about the Resident Pods that live in the Puget Sound. Did you know that Orcas spend their lives living with their moms? Or that the resident Orcas only eat Chinook Salmon? Be sure to ask your child what he or she remembers from the presentation! Jeff is conducting research about things we do at home that can make a difference in helping the Orcas. He left surveys for each family to fill out as best they can. When returned each child will receive more Orca trading cards! (5 extra cards for each child that returns their survey and if everyone returns their survey each child will get 10 extra trading cards!!!!) Please return these as soon as possible! After the Orca presentation we practiced following step by step instructions to draw our own Orcas! Be sure to check these out by the door!

Math
Our current studies are focusing on counting, developing number sense, and even place value for some. This week we've been comparing numbers and putting them in order from least to most. We learned a game called compare that can be played at home...remember the card game War? It's very similar, but with a new name and without the competition piece of collecting your opponents cards! This can be played with a regular set of cards minus the face cards. Each player turns over a card and the player with the larger card says ME! After each round cards are placed in a discard pile. Play continues until all cards are used. For the next round the player with the smaller card says ME! This helps in the recognition of numbers and also in grouping images together in our mind as we count the pictures on the card. For students ready for a SUPER CHALLENGE turn over 2 cards and read them together as a 2 digit number. Have fun!

Language Arts
Writing Workshop continues as a time looked forward to! Everyone is growing as a writer! For some that means now writing their own name...for others it means incorporating simple sight words...for others it means sounding out the beginning and ending sounds of the words they are writing...and for others it means starting to incorporate long vowel patterns into their writing! In phonics groups some continue to focus on the beginning consonant sounds, others on beginning digraphs like sh, ch and th and others on beginning blends. If you would like to know specifically what your child is working on please feel free to ask! We are playing alphabet BINGO again, but this time we are given a word and we have to look for the letter it starts with! If you are inspired check out a BINGO game and try this version at home! We have also begun reading groups! Everyone now has at least 2 books that they can read! Perhaps you might like to have your child read to you some morning?! Thank you so much parent volunteers!

Project GREEN Water Testing

2011-10-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

The 3-5 graders traveled to Moxlie Creek at Watershed Park to do water quality testing last week. This was a part of Project GREEN (Global Rivers Environmental Education Network) and our group was one of many testing on local waterways. We gathered information on pH, temperature, nitrates, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity and had a good time hiking in the park. Thanks to Rachel and Jeanne for helping to drive on this trip.

Baby Vowels, Doubles +1, and Pumpkins!

2011-10-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

Can you believe we have had over 30 days of school?! We have been so busy and have learned and grown so much together! It feels great to be solid in our routines as we flow through our day. Our time together is always so sweet!

Math
We continue working on our math facts and practicing different strategies to help us solve addition equations. For example, if we know our 10 + __ really well, then 9 + ___ is just one less. Or, if we know our doubles, 4 + 4 then 5 +4 is just one more. Some are working on adding double digits and adding the ones before adding up the tens (which is a tricky habit to get into sometimes, since when we count, we add up our big 10s and then add on the little ones!). We have been playing memory games, BINGO, making fact books, dice games, and working on our addition packets to help us strengthen these skills.

Language
In centers, we are working on our vowel key and have begun with the "baby" vowels (short vowels). They are babies and make baby sounds (don't know how to say their name yet!) and always need a babysitter. We went through our consonant sound board and found all the really good babysitters, those that sometimes have trouble, and those that should never ever babysit(!!). Our time with the short vowels is focused on playing with different word families. Some put beginning consonants in front of chunks (like __op) and other put in consonant blends to help find the words that belong in the family. This last week we focused on "o" and this week we will made flip books, will do our first word/sound sorts this week and play other word games that help us recognize sounds we hear at the beginning or ending of a word to make new words.

Special Guest
We had a wonderful student from Evergreen visit to share a few fun science experiments with us. We tested for sugar content in different drinks, played with acids and bases, and checked out how well we wash our hands (a great reminder to really do a thorough job!)

Theme
We had fun creating our own basic map of Washington (including major mountain ranges, largest rivers, big cities) the week before last. This past week, we learned a few interesting fact about our state. Ask your child if they know the state fruit, bird, insect, fish, vegetable, tree or flower. Or, what is our state's nickname or some of our state's industry (what we sell).

Art
Look for our art decorating the walls at Samhain!

Friday Workshops

Field Trip
Lattin's continues to be a favorite field trip!

"Olders" Group Off to a Great Start

2011-10-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

Now that we are officially into our second month of school, it is fair, accurate, and important to say, "I Love It Here!" Students, parents, and teachers all work together to help create that growing love of learning that is so vital for effective education. OCS is truely a community and the size and commitment make real learning an expectation for all.
Diagnosing and meeting individual skill needs in math, reading, and writing has been a priority during this first month. Each student is working on areas of individual challenge in math as well as doing some group lessons in measurement. As Jeriann mentioned, Steven Kant has offered his games and puzzles and we will be using his "Flip-Chip Algebra" lessons in the near future. We have been setting and evaluating weekly learning goals and have worked on our goal proposals for conference time.
The Hobbit has proved to be an exciting and inspiring read aloud and we've worked on visualizing skills with the different settings. Our artwork with Smaug, the dragon, is worth viewing on the classroom wall.
Most importantly, this first month has been a time in which I have gotten to know ten wonderful learners. It is clear to me that this will be a great and memorable school year for us all!

We Love Bike Week!

2011-10-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

The sounds of bike bells and horns filled the air last week during bike week and it was such a wonderful week! We are so grateful for the rain holding off so we could use all our recess time outside on our bikes. It is such a joy to watch our kids grow in their confidence on their bikes and support one another as they learn to ride.

Math
In math, we have been working on strengthening our understanding of numbers and place value. We are spending time here to help us build a strong foundation in number sense that will help us work with bigger numbers and utilize different strategies when solving addition/subtraction problems. We also continue to work on our addition math facts. Some are working on adding three numbers together and developing strategies to do this process easily (like finding two number that make ten, finding two number we already easily know the answer to, or adding smaller numbers onto a bigger number).

Today, we had a special guest visiting our class and Brett's class. Stephen brought in all sorts of math puzzles and building supplies that were super fun and really worked our brains! I was so amazed watching the kids put together puzzles that I was still trying to figure out!

Language
Writing workshop continues to be a favorite. We are adding words to our word wall to help us spell those common and sometime not so phonetic words. Our spelling lists will be going home next week which will include these great words.

We have been working on an animal alliteration book during literacy centers. The kids have been having fun creating artwork and sentences such as, "The leaping lizards like licorice lollipops." and "The zebras zip zucchini." Fun! We are also working on our lowercase letters and learning the strokes that are helpful for fluid writing. Magic C got to sing her rap today about a, d, g, o, and q - ah yay!

We having begun meeting in our reading groups and reading together. The books we read go into a "Fluency Bag" that the kids then get to pull from to help gain fluency in their reading.

Buddy reading has begun!! Most of the kids are in groups of three with one older and one younger buddy. They take turns reading a book to the younger friend. They LOVE buddy reading and look forward to it and get so excited when it is time to get their buddies. I'll post pictures of this sweetness next week!

Theme
We have officially begun our theme!!! Looking at the globe and a map of the world was a good start for us and we learned where the seven continents are located. Ask your child if they remember the "Continents" song and the body actions! We then looked at North America and the United States. We had fun sharing the puzzle pieces of a U.S. puzzle and taking turns putting in the states that we each had. Next, we will focus our attention on Washington state.

Art
Be sure to check out our cool spider webs! We played with blending colors with chalk pastels. We also learned a bit about spiders and just how exactly they make the silk thread to make their webs. Ask you child how spiders do it!

Friday Workshops
I love the creativity the children bring with them for Friday Workshops. It also warms my heart to witness the sweet, caring ways they teach their friends and the special attention they give their younger friends. Here are a few shots from last week's workshops.

See you all at conferences! I'm looking forward to connecting with each of you!

Hello Fall!

2011-10-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

This week it is really starting to feel like fall! There's a chill to the air and we've been wearing raincoats out for recess! In the classroom we've settled into routines and are setting goals for the year. We look forward to sharing these with you at conferences!

We are deep into our pattern unit in math...this week I've seen more tricky patterns than ever! There were even patterns with 5 or 6 colors! Wow! We continue to have fun with pattern games. I've added some to the take homes...have fun! Are there any patterns around your house? Any small items your child can create a pattern with? I'm sure they would love the opportunity to show you some tricky tricky patterns!

In language arts we've begun centers! Thank you parent volunteers for making this possible! We now have extra time for practicing our handwriting and phonics studies. So far we've been sorting picture cards by the letter they start with or by the vowel they have (depending on the group) and playing alphabet BINGO. Centers will vary from week to week but will generally include games to help develop phonics skills at many levels. I know that the kids have really enjoyed our parent volunteers, and I so appreciate the help. If you have the time, please consider signing up for a day!

Maps, maps and more maps! Theme has begun with a look at maps and globes and differentiating between the land and water. We each colored our own world map, showing both land and water. Being that we live in the state of Washington our worldly travels will naturally begin here in Washington! To start we are reading books, talking about and drawing the things that are common around our state... Orcas, lighthouses, apples, flowers, farmer's markets, trees, elk...ask your child what else they see around our lovely state!

It continues to be a joy spending my days teaching, learning and growing with your children!

An Amazing Start to the Year!

2011-09-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

Hello Lovely Families!

So far the beginning of the year has beenwonderful! I am thoroughlyenjoying getting to know your sweet children as we settle into a new schoolyear! Routines are beingestablished, friends are being made and we are having lots of fun!

Math

We have begun our study of patterns! We’ve learned some new games and havebeen building patterns with a variety of materials. Can your child find or build patterns anywhere aroundhome? Perhaps a striped afghan orfancy socks…rugs, pajamas…we will soon be starting a list of patterns we findin everyday life, and I would love for you and your child to add to it! Some of the new games we’ve learnedwill be added to the take home collection…please feel free to take games homeanytime now!

Language Arts

What a group of writers! Writing workshop is already a success with everyone thinkingof topics to write about and “writing” at his or her own level. We have been exploring Language Artschoices…Alphabet BINGO, letter/word matching puzzles, beginning consonantgames, letter hunts around the room, reading, name puzzles… We learned ourfirst 2 letters in handwriting, F and E, using our special chalkboards for thefirst time…pretty exciting! Nextweek letter studies will begin in small groups.

Theme

We have been busy with many activities getting toknow each other better andlearning to use the 3 part message to help us solve problems peacefully.

The 3 Part Message includes: Noticing (describingwhat you noticed or what happened), Feeling (telling how you feel), and NextTime (making a request for what you would like to see happen). We spent a day on each part readingbooks to learn about it and using games to practice it. Our feelings bean bag toss has been abig hit! Be sure to ask your childabout this one! Finally, we usedpuppets to put all the parts together and practice using the 3 PartMessage. We have even had somereal life opportunities to practice this message. Sometimes we may say or do something in a grumpy way andthen have a “rewind moment” and work on using this new method. It is still new to the kids and will besomething we work on throughout the year. I am proud of the efforts they have put into learning how to use the 3part message and extremely proud of those willing to try this in real lifescenarios. We have cards availablein the classroom to help us remember each of the steps. If you’d like one for home, let meknow!

Inspired by projects we'd been working on for International Day of Peace, Cassius declared that he was going to work to end the war. I asked what he was planning to do and he said "make posters". I offered large paper and soon many friends had joined the cause! Thanks for the idea Cassius!

Investigations

This is our end of the day choosing time. There are so many ships to be built,picnics to be had, and books to be read! It seems that this time of day has become a favorite for many. I love taking a step back to watch thesocial interactions that occur as children explore various interests. Free exploration offers a wonderfulopportunity to grow as an individual and friend. So far, favorite choices seem to be: tinker toys, thecasita, reading, art, blocks and legos.

I have rethought my request to have parents waitin the hallway until we clean up. Investigations is actually a really neat time to come on in and interactwith the kids. So, as long as youthink your child will still be able to participate in our community clean up(we all help to clean the whole classroom) at the end of the day, you arewelcome to come on in and join us anytime after 2:30! Please note: Wed is teacher planningday, so the afternoon schedule varies.

Thank you for sharing your wonderful children withme! I cherish the time I get tospend with them and look forward to seeing them each day! I am so thankful to have such anamazing group of kids to spend the year with!

Our Beautiful Class!

2011-09-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

What an amazing first two weeks of school! It has been pure joy getting to know this sweet group of kiddos and creating community together. We have been busy creating our class/school agreements, practicing how we like to communicate with each other and feeling out how we will work together as a group. Here's what we have been up to at a glance (OK, maybe not a quick glance this time! I promise a quicker one next time!):

Math: Addition games! Reviewing and learning our math facts of 1-10 or 1-20. Also, reviewing how we play math games so we can all learn our best by taming our dice and keeping voices low. We are learning how to make choices that suit us as learners and help us grow our math brains.

Language: Writing Workshop and Literacy Centers! Everyone was eager with stories ready to put onto paper in Writing Workshop. We all like a quiet workshop to help us sound out our words, so we are working on creating this quiet space. We started our Word Wall with our first word "are" so ask your child how to spell it! We have been practicing going to Literacy Centers, managing our time at each one, and staying focused. They are all doing amazing! We are ready for the real deal next week! In handwriting, we reviewed our upper case letters and will begin our lower case letters next week. Magic C will finally make an appearance (everyone is so anxious for her to come out and thinks she sleeps way too much!).

Afternoons: We spent this last week focusing on peace for International Day of Peace. We read books about peace and thought about how we can help bring peace to our school, family, and community. We also explored mandalas a bit and learning how there are mandalas all around us...a birds nest, a snow crystal, our eyes....we then created our own peace mandalas. Look for these peaceful creations on our wall soon! We will work more with peace next week by practicing peaceful communication (giraffe talk) and our solution wheel. In P.E., we have been enjoying connecting with the older class and playing group games in the gym and outside.

Reading Workshop: We are practicing how to find a quiet spot, choosing books that we can read and help us grow as readers, and raising a hand when needing help. We are building up our reading time everyday!

Jobs: Everyone is so amazing with their weekly jobs! It warms my heart to watch the kids take care of our classroom in such a sweet, thoughtful, and caring way.

Friday Workshop: I love how eager the kids were to jump right in and teach a workshop on the very first Friday of school. Thank you for teaching us how to make egg carton caterpillars, gak, and dressing up and acting out stories!

I feel so grateful to get to spend the day with your children, to be their teacher, to learn from them, and to be a part of their lives. Thank you for a wonderful start to a new school year!

Check Out These Amazing Presenters!!

2011-06-10T16:11:00.000-07:00

Wow! These kids worked so hard researching, creating a poster and presenting to our class!! I loved witnessing nervous kiddos find the courage to present to the class, the class being supportive to each other and listening respectfully, giving and receiving compliments, and feeling so shiny and successful when they finished presenting. Thank you for all the support and encouragement you gave your children throughout this BIG project. Everyone did a fabulous job and we have all enjoyed learning from each other. We are busy making books about everything we learned!

Cougar Mountain Zoo is amazing! We had a wonderful time with the lemurs, cranes, tigers, wallabies, macaws...all endangered animals!

Hello June!

2011-06-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

We just can't believe it is June. Today in our morning meeting the kids discussed how it doesn't seem like June should be here yet and the year went by way too fast. I agree! I'm definitely not ready to say goodbye to this sweet and amazing group of kiddos. Luckily, I don't have to for a couple more weeks (13 days to be exact, still way too soon!).

We finished up fractions by looking at just one whole and fractioning it into pieces. The highlights were cutting a ginger cooking into sixteenths (with our fraction makers - isn't that what everyone calls a knife?) and eating it fraction by fraction. It was fun coming up with equivalent fractions and seeing the more we fractioned into pieces the more pieces we ended up with yet the bigger the number got on the bottom. And, of course, no math concept would be complete without a visit from Mistress Wonka. She asked her Oompas to make her candies using her special recipes, however, something got on her recipes, so they needed to figure out the missing quantities. With teaspoons and her magical dough, they set to work. She was, most definitely, impressed. We also had fun playing fraction bingo, fraction war, hexagon exchange (using pattern blocks to help us see fractions and build wholes), and the hex game (comparing fractions to help us get across the board). We also enjoyed creating art with patterned blocks and then finding the fractional value of the picture. Most worked with the hexagon equaling one and finding the value of the other blocks from there and then adding up all their shapes to find the total value. Some worked on assigning a different value to the hexagon (like 1/2 or 3) and finding the value of the other blocks. Tricky business! We also played with creating symmetrical designs using 1/2 or 1/4 of the triangles. Check them out on our wall! Some worked on adding and subtracting same fractions while others worked on adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators and finding common denominators. Some also worked on teaching the fractions manners and how to make them proper.

This last week we have been playing a little bit with algebra. Say what?! Didn't we do that in seventh grade when we were kids?? Yup, it's true and the kids are AMAZING and so ready to take it on. Using the image of a balance we can identify missing numbers that will help us figure out what would make each side equal. Some have even moved onto simplifying equations and solving problems like 4x-2x+8=2x+6+x. It has definitely put our adding and dividing skills to use like in x+x+x=12. Fun stuff!

This week we are playing with probability and statistics and how to make educated guesses using data from samples we take. We had fun today in groups of three sampling a bag of red and blue tiles and predicted which bag we had, the one with 25 reds and 5 blues, the one with 20 reds and 10 blues, or the one with 10 red and 20 blues. We took 20 samples altogether but after every 5 samples we made a guess as to which bag we thought we had. They definitely changed as they went so we all decided it is helpful to get a good number of samplings!

In language, one group finished reading "Green Man" and doing critical thinking and vocabulary work. It has been fun working with the dictionary and finding words so we have continued with our dictionaries to help us learn different Latin prefixes. We have done pre- and post-. We have enjoyed brainstorming words, finding their definitions and coming up with what we think the prefix means. We record the meaning of the prefixes, our favorite words, and then choose one to put in a sentence and illustrate. Some enjoyed creating new words by adding this handy meaning unit to words. For example, "Postlunch we will have teacher planning." We are making mini dictionaries so you will have to wait until the end of the year to see their great work. The other group is working on spelling patterns with word ladders and finding word power in chunks of words. We all made animal riddles this week which are a set of clues that are given to someone who tries to guess the endangered animal. We are hoping to share them with each other and our younger friends. Oh, have you heard we are doing cursive?! Yes, the kids have been anxious to learn cursive so we are ending the year with some fanciness.

We wrapped up our learning about wolves this week. We have learned about the pack dynamics, what they eat, how they survive, how they communicate, how packs interact and their territory, and how biologist study them and learn all of this information. Phew! We even watched a bit of a video about how wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone. Wolves hold such an important place and keep nature balanced. To illustrate how the loss of species affects all the other 33 million species of life, we played a revised version of Jenga. We took pieces out but did not place them on top. Each block taken away was a species becoming extinct. No matter how careful we were in taking them out, it still collapsed after 15 blocks. No! We do not want any more species to become extinct!

We finished "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" and we all loved the book and the ending. Edward learned so much in his life and we were happy to see him loved and loving another. We are now reading "Tall Tails," a diary of a dog who helps the Wright Brothers design the first flying machine. It's been pretty entertaining and they have even described body positions of the dog that with our knowledge of wolf body language, we can interpret!

We made our goal of reading 500 books this year!!! We are still going towards 600 as a bonus to for extra toppings on our ice cream. AND, we are so close to 1000 cranes! We should be there by the end of the week!

News from the Peeping Pandas!

2011-05-03T20:14:00.001-07:00

Wow! When Spring comes around we get so busy with projects, learning, having fun that time really does flies! With all the projects, planning and enjoying of your children, it has been hard to sit myself down to update the blog. So much has been happening and we have all been sharing and growing in so many ways!

I hope you all had a chance to stop by Traditions to see your children's beautiful artwork in window. We had fun using Eric Carle's style of painting tissue paper and cutting out pieces to create an image of our favorite endangered animals. If you missed out, the artwork will be up in our classroom soon.

As you know, we are getting into our new theme of Endangered Animals. We have all picked out a favorite endangered/threatened animal which may potentially be the topic of our Spring research project (more info. coming soon!). We have learned about the different status levels of animals and what they mean for a species. We discovered the precious Gray Wolf had been removed and in learning the process of how this occurred... let's just say we have some very passionate and outraged kiddos! We will learn more about the Endangered Species act and how a species officially becomes listed. This week we are learning about the classification system of living things. We learned a little history along the way about Aristotle (ask your children how Aristotle organized living things. We definitely found some flaws in the system!) and how he classified animals and then Linnaeus organized it a bit more for us and developed the system we use today. We began with an overview of all the Kingdoms and we will then focus our time in the Animal Kingdom.

In math this past month, we worked on division and making fair shares with sometimes remainders. Mistress Wonka made an appearance as apparently her customers are constantly squabbling over leftover pieces of candy. She had her Oompas make family guide books so families know exactly what size boxes will work for them with no leftovers. The kids were amazing me with how quickly they picked up division and some were ready for the really big numbers. We looked at division through the glasses of sharing things as well as grouping things. A few olders worked on dividing REALLY big numbers using the "forgiving" method which means taking chunks of groups out (I call it whittling it down to a reasonable number) and then adding all our chunks together.

We have just begun fractions - FUN! It was great to hear the examples kids have of when they use fractions or when they might find themselves saying a fraction...money, time, sharing food, measuring, miles traveled...This week we are looking at fractions as a way to describe a group of things. For example, I have 6 tiles...2 are green, 3 are blue, and 1 is red...so 2/6 are green, 3/6 or 1/2 are blue and 1/6 is red. Check out your children's "Goofy Groups" in their Thursday Packet.

In language, we continue working on our stories in Writer's Workshop. We have also been working in our reading groups. One group is working on reading short pieces of literature and doing deeper thinking around the theme of the pieces. We are focusing on the idea of change and how characters change in a story. It has been great for us to really stop and think more about what something means or why we think something and how we can prove it from quotes in story. The other group has been working on syllables and putting them into their bodies. We made up a fun game to play...ask your child if they are in this group and how to play the game!

We have taken a break from word sorts and our spelling words are all coming directly from out writing workshop stories or a list of high frequency words. I noticed several writers using contractions in their stories but a bit confused on how to spell them and what the apostrophe was doing in the word. We all also played with contractions and what they are and how to write them. We actually became "word surgeons" and brought out our scalpels and band-aids to change words into contractions! Such excellent doctors!

We are almost to our goal of 500 books! We read a little over 400! Our initial goal was 600 books though we decided that if we do get to 600 that will mean extra toppings for our ice cream!

For our read aloud, the kids chose The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. We are all enjoying Edward so much! While we read we are tracking the things that happen to Edward and how he changes from the experiences he has with different people in his life. It has been a wonderful supportive text for our reading group who are focusing on the concept of change in literature.

On Earth Day we spent our afternoon helping out our tree friends in Watershed Park. We clipped, pulled and ripped ivy off the trees. We put in a lot of hard work and were very satisfied with our job well done!

April brought in the first round of book response and they were all absolutely amazing! Everyone worked so hard and did very careful and creative work. Here are just a few that I was able to capture....

With this book response the kids needed to work in groups of four (like the characters in the book) and create a club house using all the ideas. FUN!

K. sporting her t-shirt she designed from a Pixie Tricks book.

A scene in Z.'s book where a lot of action takes place!

We are almost to 600 cranes and the kids keep going and going and going...Thank you to all who have brought in origami paper! We hope to reach our goal by the end of this month or the beginning of next and send them with our wish to a school in Japan.

Happy Spring!

2011-03-20T19:35:00.001-07:00

Yay, spring is here!! We've been enjoying daffodils and tulips in our room this past week and the kids have been antsy to sing spring songs. With the shift of seasons we will shift our theme focus next week!! The kids have already begun brainstorming ideas and posting topics on our theme chart. Hmmm..what will it be...microscopic organisms, ancient civilizations, electricity, ferocious animals....we will take votes this week, check in with our friends next door and announce the new theme this THURSDAY!!

Our final explorations in geology were in landforms. We made really neat pop-up books of different landforms. We also creating these beautiful pieces of artwork while also exploring warm/cool colors and foreground, midground and background.

We looked at the map of USA and located some major landformations like mountain ranges, hills and plains. It was fun to also look at all the states and where they are located and learn where some of the places we have heard about can be found, like the Grand Canyon, as well as get a sense of what some states may look like.

How we use rocks and minerals in our lives was our very last topic of conversation. We searched inside our room and outside for anything that was made from rocks and minerals. We found SO many things. We learned a bit about the process of getting the rocks/minerals from the Earth, quarries, and sometimes mountain top removal! Yikes, we did not like that! It was a good reminder for us to be mindful of everything we use (and recycle it if it can't be used anymore) as it all came from somewhere and has a price more than the $ we pay at the store.

You may remember, we played with homophones a few weeks ago and the kids were also finding great homonyms. We recorded and played with those a bit along with our weekly word sorts. We also played with limericks this week, which the kids loved and found to be quite hilarious. After hearing some examples and noticing the similarities and patterns in this form of poetry we learned the rules of a limerick and created one together. Are you ready...

There once was an old man named Fred,

he was silly and gooey on his head.

He ate a doughnut

and lived a hut,

all the while laughing with Ned!

Be sure to check out their individual limerick on our wall soon! Needless to say, Fred, Ned, and Ted all became quite popular!

Making traps with our younger buddies is always a highlight of this time of year. We had some clever traps this year...pictures of cute lady leprechauns to lure one into trap, ladders leading to yummy shamrocks only to get their feet and hands wet and be trapped...well, those clever leprechauns didn't fall for any of our tricks (although a few lost a hat in all their mischief making) and then they made a mess in our room along with some of their own tricks. Some of our posters were upside down, the calendar made no sense and they knocked over chairs, baskets, books....they did leave a few pieces of gold and shamrocks behind, thank goodness! Later in the day we had shamrock smoothies, yum! I made them with shamrocks and wild mushrooms (a leprechaun's favorite food!). No one seemed to believe me...

In math, we have continued to work on multiplication this last week. This week most of us will be revisiting subtraction and addition for a bit before moving on to division. Others will continue to work with multiplication and learning their times table.

In reading, we have been tuning in to interesting words to help us expand our vocabulary. As a group we have collected tarry, luxurious, ravenous and exquisite. Some kids are practicing finding words they don't know in their own reading during reading workshop. In finding these interesting words, we also thought about how to figure out what they might mean by what the sentence is saying and what makes sense. All our guesses were right on when we checked the dictionary!

In the afternoons, one day a week we have been focusing our energy on making our bodies stronger with P.E. which the kids have really enjoyed. We did some running around the gym and counted how many laps we could do in ten minutes -pant, pant! We purchases new jump ropes (reserved for jumping rope only!) and have begun practicing jumping rope on our own and learning how to coordinate our bodies and rope. Some of the kids have really gotten into it and want to practice every recess. And, everyday they are getting stronger and adding more techniques like jumping backwards or crossing the arms. Go jumpers!!

We will begin book shares next month, look for information in your child homework folder this week!

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE SPARKING VOLCANOES…

2011-03-16T14:45:00.000-07:00


Week of March 14, 2011
Theme	~Preparing for conferences (My Time at School Book) ~Japanese Inspired Watercolors (The students had been spontaneously conversing about what happened in Japan. There many thoughtful questions being asked and answered, so I thought it would be appropriate to have a more formal discussion as a whole group. We talked, asked questions, shared feelings…and learned a bit about the nation of Japan.) ~Shamrock art
Math	~Subtraction (We are using the skills we’ve been practicing to solve subtraction equations on paper! It’s interesting to see how the concepts we’ve been learning translate to paper and pencil work!) ~Brain Scavenger Hunt (Assessment for conferences)
Language Arts	~Writing workshop ~Collecting a writing sample (writing about a time when we were excited) ~If I were a leprechaun…(writing/art project) ~Buddy Reading
Investigations	Lots of art, dramatic play, board games, and reading this week.

MULTI-SCENSORY LANDFORMS

2011-03-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

Our learning about landforms started with a discussion about landforms…some that we already knew and some that were new to us. “What’s a doom (dune) anyways?” It was lots of fun creating a game to help us remember the different types of landforms. We drew pictures of landforms and wrote labels, which together make up the cards in our matching game. It’s sometimes tricky finding the words that match our pictures, but looking at the beginning letter really helps!

After learning about the different types of landforms, we were ready to create landform art! We each chose two landforms to include in our art, one in the foreground and on in the background. We then chose to add a sun or moon, and added stripes, stripes, and more stripes! We reviewed warm and cool colors and chose one family for the landforms and the other for the sky. The results are quite beautiful and VERY colorful!

Playdough is always fun! There were many innovative ways to create landforms (check out the elbows!)…some of us even tried sitting on the playdough to make plains!

Some landforms are even fun to run down!

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE SPARKING VOLCANOES…

2011-03-09T14:13:00.000-08:00

Week of March 7, 2011
Theme	Everyday uses of rocks and minerals ~ We have been learning about many ways that rocks and minerals are present in our everyday lives, and created books to illustrate some of our favorite. Many of us were surprised just how many items really are made from rocks and minerals…it was interesting to imagine a world without any of these products! Brainstorming ideas for our next theme!
Math	Subtraction ~ Making and Illustrating Subtraction Equations with simple pictures; Practicing subtraction through games: Subtraction Tic Tac Toe or Subtraction 5 in a Row, subtraction board games that we created, Empty the Bowl, Grab Bag Subtraction
Language Arts	Writing workshop, Phonics groups (beginning consonants, sm/sp/st/sk, __ck /__ke word sort), Reading groups, Handwriting (A,I,T,J)
Investigations	Lots of art, dramatic play, and board games this week.

3rd Annual "Snowshoe" Trip!

2011-03-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

What an incredible trip! Every year is amazing as the children share in an memorable community experience while developing their awareness of the incredible strength they possess. This year was special in that many of the children were in kindergarten the first year I took the kids on this trip. The last two years they have been anxiously waiting for their time to come and go on THE snowshoe trip. I will always remember one child saying as we were driving out of the parking lot, "I can't believe this day is here! I can't believe I'm going on the snowshoe trip!"

What also amazed me about this group of kids is that they were a younger group than in the past, carried their own packs the entire way, AND did an extra three mile hike on our second day up there, totally their mileage at 12 miles! WOW! And that's not counting all the sledding and climbing up hills! Since there was little snow this year, we left the snowshoes at home and hiked in. The kids still like to call it the snowshoe trip. No blisters or frozen toes but we did leave with a stronger connection with our friends and nature, an opportunity to persevere and accomplish something great, and oodles of memories!
.
Here are a few photos of our experience together...

And we're off! Four and a half miles to go! Some of us did a little math along the way as we checked our mileage to see how far we had gone and how far we had left to go. And what does 3.2 miles really mean? Well, let us discuss fractions and tenths...

It's so great to have good friends by our side.

We saw lots of animal tracks!

We love sledding together...

...on each other...

...and getting a little extra push!

Who needs sleds?! At every moment you could be sure there was a kiddo scoping out the terrain for potential sledding spots!

Occasionally we took breaks to eat, sleep, and play games together in our cozy hut.

And the whole crew! What a beautiful group of people!

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE SPARKING VOLCANOES…

2011-03-02T13:38:00.000-08:00

Hi all! I am trying out a new format for the blog. My goal is to have something fairly simplistic to keep you informed of what's going on in the classroom each week. Periodically, I will add longer entries, highlighting specific projects. I would love any feedback you have as I try out this new format! WHAT'S HAPPENING!
Week of March 2, 2011
Theme	Landforms ~ We are learning to identify different landforms (mountains, valleys, plateaus, plains, butte, etc,). Activities include creating landform matching card games, “colorful landforms” art with warm and cool colors, and sculpting landforms.
Math	Subtraction ~ Number writing practice, Creating and illustrating subtraction equations (using number cards to create equations, drawing a sequence of pictures to illustrate the equation, and telling a story that explains the pictures/equation)
Language Arts	Writing workshop (focus on spacing between words and where to add periods), Phonics groups (sh and ch game, wh, ch, th and sh picture sort, silent e word sort), Reading groups/language arts games
Investigations	Lots of building (with blocks, legos, Kynex), dramatic play, art and playing board games. I have noticed that the block play has moved beyond building and now includes pretend play utilizing the structures. Playing Board games has recently become a favorite activity. If you have any age appropriate games that you’d like to share for a week or so let me know! It would be fun to add some new ones into the mix!

Happy Year of the Rabbit!

2011-02-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

Did the flea flee? Is that a moose eating mouse? Are we having fun with words and playing with homophones? YES! We've had a great time thinking of words that sound the same but have very different meanings and spelled differently. Look for our funny sentences on our door soon!

We have continued to focus on word choice in our writing and finding ways to include interesting words. We thought of many ways a person might write "said" depending on how they felt...barked, mumbled, whispered, yelled....We enjoyed saying "It's raining outside," with all the different ways. We've been keeping our eyes open during reading workshop (as we read our own books) for words to add to our list. Thinking of words for "eat" was fun and enjoyed even more as we practiced eating the different ways. Did she nibble her popcorn or maybe she devoured it! Actually doing it helped us understand how much more detail we can give with just one word thus painting a vivid picture for our readers.

In math, we played with rotating and flipping designs and created some phenomenal artwork which the children are hoping to put into a coloring book to sell. We also played with tessellations and found a fun way to create a pattern piece that fits into itself over and over. Look for both of these pieces of work on our wall!

We also moved from polygons to polyhedrons. We had fun learning how to name and draw (and create!) three dimensional shapes which led us to drawing three dimensional houses and letters. It fit ever so nicely with our crystal studies as we identified crystal structures!

Mistress Wonka finally made her first appearance this year! Apparently she needed a new line of candy and wanted all the candy to be symmetrical polyhedrons. She asked her Oompas to design ideas for her new candy as well as share ideas of what interesting properties could be included in the candy (for example, ice breath or invisibility). I heard she was quite impressed with the Oompas' work and promised to return soon. Their work can be found on the windowsill.

We began multiplication! Yay!! Big cheer from the kids! We played with different ways to group numbers, revisited our factors that we were keeping track of earlier in the year, practiced our counting by and started our multiplication math games. We have played Tic-Tac-Toe with a Twist and made grid art and multiplication designs. For some, these are new games and for others, games they are revisiting. Older kids who have played these games last year, stretch themselves by working with bigger numbers. It is wonderful to see the children take responsiblity of their learning and make choices that help them grow as learners.

In geology, we have been thinking about how rocks and minerals are used in our lives, both past and present. We know that long ago toys and games were created using the natural world around us, so it made since that many of the games we know and love today have their orgins with rocks and pebbles. We learned a couple of old old games, one of which was Mancala. We made our own boards from cartons and pebbles we found outside but also discussed that originally, the "board" was simply holes dug into the earth. Now, here is one of those wonderful teacher moments...guess what I found these two doing the next day during recess? Yes! They had created a traditional Mancala game and having a blast. Love it!

We had a great Chinese New Year celebration organized by a wonderful group of parents - thank you! The kids had a great time learning about the traditions and symbolism of foods, making lanterns, eating pot stickers, and participating in a dragon dance.

Friday kid workshops have been going well! I am always impressed with the creativity the children have with the workshops they teach. They are always coming in with new ideas. We've had how to make mazes or mud pots to sideshows about Senegal. Here Zac is teaching about one of his passions, airplanes!

In January, Fridays were spent either at the food bank or swimming at the YMCA. I spent my time out of the pool this year which allowed me the opportunity to really observe all the children (outside of my seal training duties, of course!). I loved watching all the children play together and help those who are learning to swim or teach a friend a water trick.

Looking ahead...snowshoe trip, Valentine's Day, 100th Day, more Mistress Wonka and multiplication, book responses, Latin, literature groups, and much much more!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-17T18:24:00.000-08:00

We are so happy to be back together after our long winter break! We got right back into our flow and learning together with new younger buddies, geodes, geometry, new stories, interesting descriptions, field trips every Friday, AND having a new friend in our classroom! Can it get any more amazing around here?!

In math, we are taking a break from reasoning numerically by reasoning spatially. We investigated polygons (versus non-polygon) shapes, learned new words to help us describe shapes and lines such as parallel, perpendicular, vertex, not to mention the names for the different sided shapes. We loved all the Greek and Latin! Something that blew our minds was that not all triangles, pentagons, and hexagons look the same. For example, a pentagon can look like a house (regular pentagon) but it can also look very different (an irregular)- as long as it has five sides, it's a pentagon. We had a lot of fun exploring these concepts on our geoboards as well as making some fun art.

This last week, we played with hexiamonds (using six triangles to make shapes) and found there are twelve possible shapes. We named them (of course!) and then explored them a bit more by playing a card game where you can play a card only if it means moving just one triangle into another position to create the new shape. This was tricky as we needed to flip and rotate to make sure we could do it.

We also began playing with tangrams and will continue to this week. We created our own set of tans and found we can create all seven pieces from one square. We explored making animals and people as well as other geometric shapes (squares, triangles, trapezoids, rectangles) with our tans by using 1, 2, 3, and so on....of our pieces. Such great problem solving, perseverance when there isn't a quick result, and wonderful group work as we help each other.

Our tangrams have led us into the world of tangram theater...fun! We each made a picture with our tangram. We had a polar bear, ostrich, bunny, kitty, candle, rocket car, and a fish. We made a group story together arranging the tiles as we told the story. All I can say as that the ostrich and bunny had an unfortunate day at the grocery story but luckily ends well! Check out our story in our room when you get the chance! The kids are excited to write more stories on their own or with a partner or two. Keep your eyes out for these collaborative creations!

In Writing Workshop, we have begun working with word choice (one of the six traits of writing) and thinking about how we can make our writing even more interesting. We practiced by turning plain sentences -rice cake sentences (The dog was hungry.) into salsa sentences (The cute little puppy dog was so hungry he scarfed down the entire Thanksgiving turkey.). The kids even had me put on my safety glasses (another story I'll share sometime!) in case any words flew off the pages.

We said goodbye to our younger buddies before Winter Break and hello to a new younger friend! Such excitement! Now during Buddy Reading, a younger friend reads a book with a older buddy coaching and then a older buddy get to read a book aloud. I had to share this picture, as one day these three older boys did not have their younger buddies. They found each other and were taking turns reading from a book at their level and helping each other with the words. YES!

We have begun moving into the world of crystals! We made a couple of crystal solutions (from minerals only!) before we left on break and were amazed at what we found when we returned. We let them sit for a couple more weeks and will really investigate them this week. We did learn all about geodes. It is incredible to think that when we crack a geode open we are the first to ever lay eyes on it! We loved what we found! We also enjoyed doing some creative writing with pretending to find what we thought was a geode but when we cracked it open we found....

Last week we spent our afternoons learning about Martin Luther King Jr. We shared what we knew and then did a bit of research on our own in small group to find out more information (and even got to watch a video and parts of his speech!). Everyone decided that if they were alive during his time that they would be right next to him marching and protesting! On Friday, we had a birthday celebration where we shared our cards we made for him, sang happy birthday (the bouncy one, of course!) and had is favorite pie, pecan.

In the spirit of service, some of us spent our Monday off, with a day ON working to restore habitat in the Green Cove wetland.

We spent three hours planting native trees, mulching, cutting and digging up blackberries. We also did a bit of water testing.

Have a wonderful week!

Welcome from the Loving Lava!!

2010-12-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

Greetings! It’s back! The ever popular OCS blog! For folks who are new, the goal of this blog/newsletter is to share with you some of the experiences that are happening in your children’s classroom. From math games we are playing and what we are reading and writing to what we are learning in theme, you’ll find it here. I hope these classroom updates help initiate colorful, detailed and meaningful conversations with your children about their experiences throughout the week.

This first entry is a bit overwhelming; we have done SO much this fall! So, I decided to do a photo entry that focus on some of our time spent learning together and a bit about our studies in geology.

Earlier this fall we began learning about different lifeskills, skills that we will always need in our life. Our first was friendship and what it means to make and keep a friend. It was fun playing getting to know you games and learning a bit more about each other. Some of us had to think pretty hard to come up with something that no one already knew! We discussed what it means to be a friend, how to show friendship, and how to make a friend. We learned how to make friendship bracelet and gave them to our younger buddies. And as most of you know, the kids put their great friendship bracelet making skills to use for a good cause by selling them to help raise money for our Cycle for Water fundraiser. Such an amazing group of kiddos!

This month we have focused on cooperation and helping others. We are so incredibly helpful and cooperative, every time I turn around someone has something to add to our poster of examples of us using cooperation in our classroom and lives or helping others. A few things that are on the list…”getting math supplies for a partner math game while another gets pencils,” helping to make breakfast for my family,” “cleaning up our classroom,””holding the heavy outside door open for our younger friends." The kids thought it would be fun using cooperation to build human pyramids!

SNOW DAY!! Now this snow creature took some serious teamwork (and a whole lot of FUN!). Making the three large snowballs together was not too difficult once there were 3 people rolling the ball. When it was time to assemble, that took some ingenuity! After the kids gathered up as many kids and adults they could fit around the giant snowball and discovering that we could not lift it high enough, the problem solving began. One kid mentioned building a ramp thus beginning a search of the playground for anything that could fill in for a ramp and ta da- top of the toy chest! And with lots of muscle, encouragement, and directing they got it done!

In geology, a few highlights have been learning about the types of volcanoes and then creating each kind…. We also learned a bit about Yellowstone and geysers, fumaroles, mud pots, and hot springs. The kids created their own experiments to model each one. They gave me the list of supplies they might need, I put them out and presto a bubbling mud pot made of coco powder, baking soda and vinegar and a geyser with baking soda and vinegar and a lid with a straw poking through that really let the geyser blow!

The trip to Burke Museum was really interesting! We saw uncut diamonds (!!) and many beautiful gems with many ooooohs, aaaaaahs and “Jeriann, you have to see this!!” It was a great kick off for us to learn about rock and minerals. This week we learned about the different types of rocks, how they are made, and the rock cycle.

We had our second trip to the food bank this last Friday. WOW! These kiddos get things done! Yeah! It was 45 minutes of nonstop work as kids opened boxes, took out the fruit bowls and put them in the crates. As they worked with their younger buddies they developed different systems to help each other out or to be more efficient. A couple of pairs joined up as one tore the packaging off, one snapped the fruit bowls apart and the two others put them in the crate - phew!

K. finally lost her other front tooth and I just couldn't resist taking this photo. CUTIE PIES!

News from the Shocking Sugar Gliders!

2010-05-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

Wow! The end of our wonderful school year is just around the corner! There is so much happening in the coming days that I decided to post all important dates today so we can get them on our calendars. Phew! It's a full calendar packed with great learning experiences and fun!

Important Dates

Friday May 14th - Field Trip with Stream Team 9:00-1:00

Monday May 17th - Field Trip to McAllister Springs 12:00-3:00

Monday May 31st - No School

Friday June 4th - Field Trip

Saturday June 5th - OCS Alumni and Friends Spring Picnic

Thursday June 10th - All Day Field Trip to Woodland Park Zoo (Seattle)

Friday June 11th - Half Day (12:00)

Saturday/Sunday June 12/13 - OCS Camp-out

Week of June 14-18 - Crazy Week! (more details posted later)

Friday June 18th - Field Day

Monday June 21st - Last Day of School - Half Day (12:00)

Tuesday June 22nd - End of the Year Picnic/Ceremony

Final Friday Workshops Schedule!!!

May 14th

Sequoia

Kat

May 21st

Oliver

Maggi

May 28th
Owen

Cedar

It has been a couple of weeks since our last post and so much has happened, where to begin?! First, I hope you were able to see our children's beautiful rainforest shadow boxes on display at Traditions for Artswalk. We were all delighted with how they turned out. To prepare for our creations we learned a bit about Henry Rousseau and his jungle paintings. We took note of how his paintings are so full of plant life and colors (and laughed when we read that sometimes he frightened himself with his own paintings of tigers in the jungle!). We also looked at Haitian box art and then combined the two styles to create our own lovely rainforest shadow boxes.

Here are a few pictures of our work with Stream Team at Circle Hawk Farm. We carried buckets of mulch to the trees near the stream and some of us worked on clipping back the blackberries. It was fun spending time together outside and working together to help our trees and stream!

Math

We finished our work with fractions last week and are focusing our minds on subtraction. We are playing a few games this week to get us in the subtraction mode by finding the difference between numbers. Some of us like to use a number line and hop from number to number to help us find the difference and others like to add on to the smaller number to get to the higher number. We will continue to play games throughout our subtraction unit that help us practice math facts, understand the concept (especially when we do borrowing) and have fun while we are learning about it!

Language

Poetry has been our focus this last week and will be for several weeks. We first wrote poems that captured the rainforest. We put all our descriptive words, onomatopoeias, and similes to work to write incredibly powerful poems. We thought about line breaks and space to bring more music to our poem. We also played with the form of our poem and how it can bring more power to certain words. Some of us included word art or aspects of concrete poetry into our poems.

In the next few weeks, we will try out techniques poets use to write poems. This week we are creating poems about simple, ordinary things around us and to do this we are putting our "poetic eye" to work. We are looking at (and smelling, feeling, hearing, and tasting) ordinary things with a fresh, new perspective and writing about them in a totally new, imaginative way. We looked at staplers, swings, bird baths, pencils, etc. and wrote down phrases, descriptions, or comparisons that we may later piece together into a poem. We had to check our descriptions to see if we were using our "poetic eyes" or our "scientific eyes." Everyone had incredible descriptions and will create very powerful poems!

Theme

We all think the rainforest produces some of the tastiest food on Earth! We certainly have enjoyed tasting and preparing a few treats. We learned all about the process of making the chocolate we like to eat, from the cacao pod, to drying the beans, grinding, and then mixing the powder with sweetener and cacao butter. Yummmmmy! Gum from chicle was just as interesting to learn about and to make. Ask your child if s/he can tell you the process to make this kind of gum and why it may help the rainforest to buy gum with chicle as an ingredient (which is hard to find!).

Many body products are made from ingredients that may come from the rainforest. We made a delicious lip balm with cocoa butter. What a treat for our lips!

Today we had a wonderful guest, our very own Steve from Fungi Perfecti!! Wow, fungi is so amazing! We learned about how important their role is in the ecosystem and the rainforest, their life cycle, and different ways humans use fungi for health and environmental clean-up. And, we will get to watch mushrooms grow in the coming weeks in our classroom! How cool!

The Lucky Leaf Cafe is doing very well! The children have made over $80 and plan to sell popcorn, truffles, and maybe fruit salad next week. We are still deciding which organization we would like to donate the money we raise. We have a couple of ideas and may split the money between the two organizations. We will keep you posted! Through our research of organizations we are learning more about indigenous communities as well as products that come from cleared rainforests. The children are putting together an informative poster to share their concern as well as inspire others to help protect our beautiful rainforests. Thank you for all your support! The children are so inspired to raise money and love selling the juices!

****Last book shares are due May 28th! Also, we are back to our homework routine and homework is due this Thursday. ****

2010-04-18T16:19:00.000-07:00

Reminders and Important Dates

ANIMAL/ PLANT PRESENTATIONS DUE THIS WEEK!

Council of Critters: Thursday April 22 @ 2:30~please join us and witness the pleas

of the rainforest critters!

View our rainforest art at Traditions this weekend for Arts Walk!

Saturday, April 24: Procession of the Species~ Come walk with us!

I am still collecting paper towel rolls! Please send in any you may have!

Math

How tall are you? How long is your foot? How many of your feet tall are you? These are some of the questions we’ve been exploring in our study of measurement! Interestingly, most of us were between 6 and 8 of our feet tall. We are wondering if this trend would continue if we were to measure more people…especially people that are taller than we are! We have a variety of predictions…so, if you’d like to figure out how many of your feet tall you are, we’d love to add your findings to our graph!

We have been measuring big things and little things, wide things and thin things. It has been fun learning to use and practicing using rulers, yardsticks and tape measures. We have also been measuring things using cubes, our hands, our feet, our pencils…because, as one student pointed out, you can use anything to measure with (just make sure you remember to include the units in your measurement!)! We’ve been comparing the lengths of many objects (including many of your feet!), and will soon be hunting for objects of particular lengths…fun, fun!

Coming soon…Our study of measurement will extend into our study of the rainforest as we learn the amount of rainfall in a tropical rain forest, as well as the sizes of the various animals we studied.

Language Arts

Spring is here! There are many exciting aspects of Spring…in fact we were able to think of many for each of the letters of Spring! After a group brainstorming session, we each wrote our own Spring Acrostic poems, and created a lovely piece of Spring art to accompany it! It was nice seeing everyone put so much thought into their creations! Check these out on a wall near you soon!

Writing workshop continues as a focused writing time. This week we spent time revising and finishing up our current stories as we prepare to move into a unit on poetry! The editing process varies from student to student. Students begin with rereading their pieces and checking that their writing makes sense and that no words or important details are missing. For some it involves circling words they are not sure of and revising the spelling with an adult. For others it means being sure to include capital letters and periods. Some may be adding an ending sound to a word or creating a space between words. One of the final steps in creating our writing workshop stories is stapling the pages together, and I must say there was LOTS stapling this week!

We read a fable about kindness this week. After reading it, we had a very interesting discussion about the story and also about kindness in our lives. A particularly interesting piece of the conversation was about times in our lives when we were feeling grumpy or just didn't think about what we were saying and said something unkind to somebody. It was really interesting hearing the kids' perspectives on this and how they felt when it happened and how the imagined the recipient felt. After this discussion, we created lists in groups of things we can do as kind friends...we compiled our ideas into one group list...check it out if you're interested!

Theme

We have been learning many fascinating facts about rainforest plants, including the many adaptations the trees have that enable them to live in such a moist environment! Rainforest trees often times have large buttresses or stilt roots to help provide support, drip tips on the leaves to prevent the collection of too much water, and smooth shiny bark to create a slippery surface for any vines trying to take root! Ask your child about the amazing walking trees…yes there are trees that can actually move! Each student created a lovely illustration of these adaptations.

Did you know that the flowers of the rainforest have evolved to attract particular pollinators? For instance, flowers pollinated by bats are typically white and bloom at night…flowers pollinated by flies typically have a moldy rotting smell…(yuck!)…We created little flip books of different flowers and the creatures that pollinate them. Each of us also sketched and water colored a unique rainforest flowers!

A rainforest would not be a rainforest without rain! Water plays such an important role in the rainforest, as well as everywhere on Earth. We have begun exploring the concept of the water cycle and how water changes forms as it cycles. We saw this first hand in an experiment using steam to make it rain in our classroom! We watched as liquid water evaporated into water vapor and then condensed back into a liquid for as it would in the upper atmosphere. It was very exciting to actually see rain fall on our table!

To further illustrate the concept of the water cycle, and to also learn how plants fit into the cycle, we will be creating our own terrariums! Look for these Monday afternoon!

FYI: You are not seeing the rainforest work come home, as all of the work we are creating will be collected together in a large rainforest scrap book that we will put together at the end of the unit.

Poetry, Flowers and Fractions with the Shocking Sugar Gliders!

2010-04-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

Important Dates
Friday, April 16th - Field Trip to the Procession Studio
Monday, April 19th - Animal Research Project Due
Thursday, April 22nd - Council of the Critters
Saturday, April 24th - Procession of the Species
Friday, April 30th - Field Trip with Stream Team (9:00-11:30)

Friday Workshops
Friday, April 16th
Claire

Animal Research Presentations
Monday, April 19th
1:00 Owen
2:30 Zachary

Tuesday, April 20th
1:00 Oliver
2:00 Cedar
2:30 Sequoia

Wednesday, April 21st
9:15 Kat
9:45 Jack
10:45 Claire
11:30 Maggi

**If you need to make a change to the time your child is presenting please try to contact another family to switch times and let me know. Thank you!**

Math
Halves, fourths, eighths, sixteenths....why yes, its fraction time! We have begun our exploration of fractions by looking at a whole and dividing it into parts. Pattern blocks have been a fun and handy way of helping us learn this concept. Our hexagon equals 1 whole. Two red trapezoids fit on a hexagon so they can each equal one-half. Our blue diamond is one-third and our green triangles are sixths. For some who have used our pattern blocks in this way in the past were challenged with the idea of giving our hexagon a different value. Say what?! Yeah! What if our yellow hexagon is equal to two, what would our trapezoids equal? Diamond? Triangle? What if our hexagon equals 12?

We played Fraction Hexagon to see how different fractions can be added together to make a whole (1). It also showed us that fractions can have different names, their equivalents like three-sixth is the same as one-half. We also created patterns or pictures with pattern blocks and were then challenged to find the value of our picture by adding up the fractional parts. This seemed really hard at first until we realized we can make wholes (1's) by putting our blocks together. We will continue with thinking about fractions as parts of a whole with other games like Hexagon Wipe-Out (where we are subtracting fractions) and adding fractions from a grab bag. Oh, learning about fractions would not be complete without our daily dose of “Action Fraction” dancing!

Language
We continue to be inspired by the rainforest and have turned our attention to poetry. We read poems from”Looking for Jaguar” that gave us wonderful examples of poems that sometimes rhyme, use vivid language, and how spacing is used to help the reader read the poem as the author intended. We created our first drafts of our poems this week and will work with these in the following weeks as we craft our final version.

Word sorts this week focused on “y, ies, ied,” “ge,” “ie, ee, ea,” and “ight, i-e.” Some of us who are working on cursive challenged ourselves by recording our words in cursive - yahoo!

Theme
We spent some time this week looking at the water cycle and the role trees have in this cycle. We had fun watching transpiration at work with our carnations in colored water! We also created a “water cycle column” (on our window sill). The column contains all the parts of a water cycle. We even planted broccoli and radish seeds to play the part of trees! Check it out!

The beautiful flowers are hard to miss in the rainforest so we spent time learning the anatomy of flowers. After looking at a few flowers in our classroom and learning their parts we ventured outside to put our anatomy identification skills to the test! We found so many different flowers and were amazed at the different sizes stamens and pistils can be. Even the tiniest flower had all the parts (oh so tiny)!

How plants have evolved and adapted to the rainforest environment is pretty interesting. We looked at some of the major ways, such as how trees develop buttresses or stilt roots. Or, how plants have drip tips or really large leaves. And, then there our liana (vines), bromeliads, and epiphytes! All of these have developed characteristics to help them survive and thrive in the rainforest. Ask your child about these plant adaptations and how they help the plant.

These rainforest flowers also inspired us to create some art. Look on our wall for our beautiful pastels of heliconia, rafflesia, bromeliads, bird of paradise, and orchids.

We also spent parts of our afternoon doing groupwork. This week we discussed “put-downs,” what they are and how we feel when we hear them. We worked in pairs and as a whole group to discuss this issue. We decided that these words did not support us and it was not ok to say them to others or to our sweet selves! I invite you to continue this conversation with your child at home.

Our trip to the Procession of the Species Studio was inspiring! We were all in awe as we admired the wonderful creations. Batiking our flags was great fun. I can't wait to see them flying high at the Procession!

**No math or spelling homework this week or next! Also, since we have our big animal research project this month, a book share does not need to be turned in this month.**

News from the Totally Awesome Tigers

2010-03-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

HAPPY SPRING!

Just in time for spring, our tomato seeds have sprouted! I suppose they too have been enjoying the warm sun!

We are busy, busy, busy preparing for upcoming conferences...goal check-ins, self-assessment books, reading check-ins...

Please make sure that you are signed up for a conference! We look forward to sharing with you!

I will be collecting jars (quart sized mason-like jars--labels removed please:) and paper towel rolls for upcoming projects. Please bring any that you might have! Thank you!

MATH

Our most recent explorations have centered around the topics of area and perimeter. As an introduction to these concepts, we began by exploring the "footprints" (outlines) made by various objects. We tried fitting geoblocks into a variety of footprints and traced a variety objects, creating footprints that we later used in a guessing game! You might try tracing some objects secretly and then having your child try to guess what they were!

Some of us arranged shapes in order by the size of their area and then by the size of their perimeter. Others created multiple shapes with a given area...not as easy as it may seem! Some of us even chose to challenge ourselves to create more shapes during choosing! We also created our own shapes and determined the perimeter. Phew!

LANGUAGE ARTS

What if everything you touched turned to puppy dogs? or cats? or monkeys? After finishing our latest read aloud, The Chocolate Touch, we thought and wrote about what types of magic touches we would most like to have! We all agreed that we'd have to be really careful, though, because what if you touched your mom?!

Breaking refrigerators and throwing them into the ocean...mixing up the fruit and veggies at the grocery store...sounds like some tricky leprechauns may be heading our way! Hopefully they won't arrive until next year! We had enough leprechauns over at OCS for this year. And geez were they sly...we didn't even catch one leprechaun in our so very creative traps! The visit of these little green friends inspired us to draw pictures of what we would do if we were leprechauns! Watch out for your refrigerators and be sure to see if you are really buying veggies! With these pictures we practiced adding as much detail as we could so that our audience would have a clear idea of what was going on!

We have started something new for reading workshop! We now have partners (from our class) and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we take turns reading to each other. On Mondays we read independently, but then summarize what we read about with our partners. This new format helps us practice reading aloud (working on fluency and expression for some) and making sure that we understand what we're reading.

THEME

The layer for this week was the UNDERSTORY! It is dark, yet still filled with abundant plant and animal life! We continued working on creating informational pieces that will eventually be put together into a large rainforest book. We drew and labeled 3 plants and 3 animal that live in this layer, as well as wrote a paragraph describing the characteristics of this layer. One of the most interesting facts we learned was that some of the leaves can be as large as an umbrella (an adaptation that helps them to capture as much sunlight as possible)!

We are excited to begin our very own research projects, choosing a rainforest animal to research and create a poster about at home! (a detailed description of the project will be in your parent box Monday!) After looking through a variety of books, each student made a list of the animals he or she would be interested in studying, circling the top 3 choices. I used this information to assign animals to students, ensuring that there would be no overlap. Students will find out which animals they are studying on Monday! We also thought about all of the different things we would like to learn about rainforest animals, and I compiled these questions into a list, that has helped me to design the project. Some things students are interested in learning include: how big are their eyes? how sharp are their teeth? how big are babies? how old can they live to be? do they climb? do they save each other's lives? so they play? do they have fur or scales?

News from the Shocking Sugar Gliders!

2010-03-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Important Dates
March 23rd-26th - Conference Week - Half Days

Math
Grouping and sharing has been our focus the last couple of weeks. We began by revisiting our “Circles and Star” game we played when we were learning about multiplication. For example, 3 x 2 would look like 3 circles with 2 stars in each one equaling 6 stars altogether. We put on our division glasses and looked at it a bit differently. It could be 6 stars grouped by 2s equaling 3 groups. This really helped many kids see the connection between multiplication and division. One child said “Wow! Thanks for explaining it that way. It makes so much sense!” We practiced grouping our school in groups of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,etc. and what to do with leftovers (remainders).

We also investigated how division can also mean sharing. If there are 6 cookies and 2 friends, how many cookies is each friend going to get (and it needs to be a fair share)? We can then always double check our calculations using multiplication. If our 2 friends each got 3 cookies that would be 2 groups of three, 2 x 3 which equal 6. That’s how many cookies we started with and YES! we figured it out correctly!

Language
As we are studying and learning about tropical rainforests we have primarily been focusing on our naturalist intelligence (of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory). We used our visual/spacial intelligence along with our verbal/linguistic intelligence to compose guided imagery writing. After we wrote our initial piece, we worked on revising and adding more to help us create a picture with our words. As all authors reread their pieces multiple times to get it just right, we read ours to ourselves looking for verbs we could spice up (there are so many ways to express run!) or where we could add more descriptive words to our nouns and verbs. We also met with peers to get feedback. We went through our writing line by line, discussing with our partner how it could be spiced up to really show our image. We also discovered that sometimes writing can be too spicy and we do not want to add too many descriptive words or it is hard to read! We also edited for capitals and periods, and for some, commas. Please come along with us and experience a journey through a rainforest....

Carefully close your eyes and imagine you’re in the rainforest. You open your jaws and take a sniff. The good aromas waft into our nose and you rustle the tall green grass covered with sparkling dewdrops. They drop onto your pelt, you shiver, then you see an okapi in the bushes. You slowly start stalking your prey. Crack! You step on a stick, the sound echoing through the quiet rainforest. A flock for birds take flight. The okapi perks up her ears. She starts to run. You follow in hot pursuit. You have been chasing for a long time. You are getting tired by you see your prey is getting tired too. You’re leaping over logs and splashing in ponds, also in marshes. Then you see your chance. Your prey stumbles. You jump. You spring. You land perfectly on your prey’s back. You kill it with one swift bite. You eat it in a few mouthfuls. Then you curl up in a bed of moss and close your eyes. The sound of the rainforest goes away. You open your eyes and you are back in your classroom. - Sequoia, 2nd grade

To experience more journeys, please look for our writing in your child’s classroom!

Word sorts this week have focused on “ee, ea” or “ay, ey, eigh.” Others have looked at “or, ore, oor” or “-ight, i_e” or dropping e when adding -ing or when to double the last constant when ading -ing.

Theme
We have finished exploring the of the layers of the rainforest and getting a good overview and understanding of the rainforest habitats. We can now go into more details about specific plants, animals, food, issues, etc. FUN! First on our list was to think about all the animals in the rainforest that really interest us. We watched videos and looked through books to help each of us create a list of very cool creatures. We each narrowed down our list to our top three most interesting animals. One of these animals will be the topic of our own animal research project! Details about the project will be available next week.

Be sure to check out the children’s beautiful animal watercolors! Our watercolors were inspired by up close photographs of creatures in their habitats. We each chose a picture to enlarge by looking closely at the lines and proportion. They are absolutely fabulous!

Other News
As most of you know we had painted lady butterflies in our room the past few weeks. The caterpillars transformed into their chrysalides while we were out snowshoeing. However, as luck would have it, one morning as we did our routine morning observation, we noticed movement in one of the chrysalides! At that very moment, we witnessed our first butterfly emerge! It was VERY exciting! We continued to keep a close eye as they all, one by one, emerged and began fluttering around in their home. We had several ideas of where the butterflies should live but ultimately decided it was for the best health of the butterflies to be let out Friday morning. It was such a beautiful sight to watch the butterflies flutter into the sunlight(although a few were a bit hesitant) and the children running and cheering after them.

Friday afternoon, six children were at school with me as the others had their turn at the food bank. It was such a glorious day (we had to be outside!) so we walked to Watershed Park. As soon as we stepped into the forest, the children observed how much like a rainforest it was, dewdrops on the green emerging plants and shades of green everywhere we looked. Suddenly, we were walking through the rainforest seeing large kapok trees, ocelots, sugar gliders, harpy eagles, and anteaters. Soon our fun evolved into being rainforest animals! It was a treat for us to be in the forest and our imagination to be inspired by the natural world.

Here's an update from Melissa and the wonderful community service the children have been involved in... We had a great time at the Food Bank to bag food for the FORKIDS program. The kids all worked hard and were very cooperative. We created an assembly line to add 14 items to each grocery bag. Each group made over 240 bags. These will be sent home with elementary school children on Friday for the weekend. Thank you to everyone who donated food! It is greatly appreciated and will go to needy families. If you and your family would like to help the FORKIDS program, they have "Family Packing Times" on the second and fourth Tuesday afternoons of each month. They start at 3 and go until 5:30, downtown, at the Food Bank. All you need to do is show up and help out! No previous experience is needed. You may also call the Food Bank and talk with Cheryl Falkenburg, if you would like more information.

News from the Totally Awesome Tigers

2010-03-05T10:27:00.001-08:00

Hello all!

The sun's been shining and there's a feeling that spring is just around the corner! WIth this comes much excitement! In the classroom we are directing this excitement to learning about many new things!

MATH
We continue to explore geometry. This week our explorations remained focused on 2-D shapes. We used pattern blocks to build shapes and fill in the outline of shapes. Some of us practiced fitting pieces together just right, so they'd completely fill the outline of a larger design. Others practiced filling in the same outline many different ways, trying to use as many pattern blocks as possible and then as few pattern blocks as possible. Tricky, tricky!

In small groups, we sorted a variety of shapes. We sorted one way, then another, and then even another way! I was surprised to see how many different ways each group came up with for sorting the shapes! Some categories included number of angles, types of lines, number of sides, how many lines could be drawn from corner to corner...each group's favorite way of sorting can be found on display in our room!

After making symmetrical butterflies last week, we formally discussed symmetry and defined it in our own words. We practiced building symmetrical designs with pattern blocks, some of us working on designs with single line symmetry and others on designs with double line symmetry!

To finish the week, we created kaleidoscope designs that beautifully illustrate the concept of double line symmetry. Be sure to check these out right outside our door!

LANGUAGE ARTS
Our handwriting works continue, as we finish up learning the strokes for the lowercase letters. We spent time playing the mystery letter game, reviewing all letters. We are starting to use the specially lined handwriting paper throughout the day, and you will see some of this in your child's Thursday pack. Please know that learning to make letters in these new ways is a process that involves lots of practice! Determining the size of letters in relation to one another is challenging for many...especially knowing which lower case letters are brave enough to extend above or below their snuggly lines! Please let me know if you have any questions!

In Writing Workshop we continue to focus on stories with a beginning middle and ending...and adding detail to our stories by asking questions...what happened next?...where did she go?...what did they eat?...what did it feel like?...what did it look like?...

Phonics groups focused on long vowels, long a vowel pattern, long i/ short i and short vowels. Groups sorted picture or word cards and recorded their learning in various ways. Some started a book recording long vowel patterns and examples of each, while some wrote silly sentences using as many of their focused vowel sounds as possible. Reading groups practiced sounding out words, using pictures for word clues, making predictions, and reading out loud (we read our very first play!). When not reading with me groups played phonics/ reading games, reinforcing their phonic studies and practicing reading skills.

We are working on creating a group yoga book. We each picked a pose, practiced and posed for a picture. Together, we created a story that includes each of the animals or objects we posed as. The ending result is a wonderful story about the adventures of a slithering snake in the desert. Look for this book coming soon!

THEME
The views great from 200 feet up in the air! And it sure is sunny! We are learning about the emergent layer of the rainforest this week...the very top layer comprised of the tops of the tallest trees! Together we read about this layer and summarized what we learned. Students then wrote their own paragraphs describing this layer. We also learned many plants and animals that live on this layer and how they have adapted to life so high above the ground! We each picked 3 plants and 3 animals to draw pictures of and label (these will eventually be included in our final rainforest book!). Did you know that orchids are found up in this layer?! Or that some birds spend their whole life up in this layer? Ask your child what some of the tallest trees are! We read a great book about one of these types of trees and all the life that depends on this amazing giant!

We paired up to find interesting facts about the rainforest, using our very best handwriting to record these facts. We learned that water lily flowers change colors when the sun comes up and that 3/4 of the worlds frogs and toads are found in the rainforest! WOW!

News from the Shocking Sugar Gliders!

2010-03-04T22:25:00.000-08:00

Important Dates
March 5th - Field trip to the food bank
March 19th - Field trip to the food bank
March 22nd - 26th - Conferences/Half days - 12:00

Friday Workshops
March 12th
Maggi
Sequoia

March 19th
Jack
Zachary

Math

Last week, on the hundredth day of school, we enjoyed playing with the hundred board and using math logic. We were given a short story and several clues that helped us discover a mystery number. The first couple were a little tricky for some of us as we learned that the clues given helped us eliminate certain numbers (meaning sometimes we needed to cross out the opposite of what the clue suggested - a little confusing!). This week, we created our own math logic stories and clues and solved each other’s mystery numbers. They were very tricky!

We continued with multiplication this week. Some learned a new game called "Flashing Factors" which involves identifying different factors for the same product. For example, if the card flashed read 3 x 4, someone could say 2 x 6 to get the card. Other played "Possible or Impossible." This was a fun game with a twist of chance. We rolled 4 die and decided if it was going to be possible or impossible to create an equation with the numbers rolled. As we shook the die we would choose and then hopefully either be able to make a multiplication equation with the numbers rolled or hopefully not! We are wrapping up our focus on multiplication and moving onward to division next week!

Language

Our first writing project this week was a personal narrative in our journals. Our inspiration, the snowshoe trip (or time at home during those days)! We thought of the most crystal clear memory from the trip and described everything we could about it, down to the tiniest detail. We thought about great leading lines to our narratives and how to make the narrative interesting without it sounding like a list. We tried describing a tiny memory (maybe it was only a minute long!) so we could really focus on showing the moment in as much depth as we could. Our journal allows us to experiment with different kinds of writing as well as hold ideas for future Writing Workshop stories.

For some, word sorts this week involved looking at turning "y" to "i" then adding "es"(like in pennies) and when "y" stays when adding "es" (like in monkeys). Others worked with short e and long e (ee) or long a (ai, ay) or "er"and "ear" words.

We finished Fablehaven this week! For our book response we wrote letters to characters that we really admired or that we really didn’t like (although our letters still needed to be respectful and use giraffe talk!). You can read our wonderful letters on the door to our room. Our next book is to be decided soon!

Theme

It sure is dark down here on the forest floor! Did you know only two percent of the sunlight reaches the forest floor?! We ventured up to the understory and it is still pretty dim with only two to fifteen percent sunlight! But, we did find many more plants and animals in this layer of the rainforest. Ask your child what they know about the forest floor and understory layers of the rainforest!

**Spelling,reading and math homework routines are back in action! Next book response is due by March 29th (they can always be turned in early!)***

Second Annual Snowshoe Trip

2010-02-27T21:22:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a trip! We hiked/snowshoed over 10 miles in two days! On Wednesday, the first 3 miles or so were completely bare of snow. It drizzled rain, slush, and then snow! The last mile had some snow but not enough to need snowshoes. The last leg of the trip is the toughest as it is a pretty steep hill but as soon as the children caught sight of the hut they charged!

After exploring the hut, picking sleeping spaces in the loft, and getting a snack, it was time for the first thing that was on all the children’s list....sledding! It’s hard to believe that after hiking 4.5 miles, with a pack the entire way for some, that there would still be energy to sled but, sure enough, they went out to sled! Remember that steep hill we had to climb to get to the hut? The children have probably hiked that hill countless times as they climbed up for another sled ride down!

That evening, the time finally arrived to read Sasquatch! The children have been wishing for this book as our read aloud for some time and we decided we would read the book while on our trip. It was a great read with some mystery, suspense, and twist. We all enjoyed it and I think I can safely say we all love the sweet Sasquatch! Thanks for the book Maggi!

We woke up the next morning to discover fresh snow covering the trees and ground! What a sweet surprise! A few children made pancakes for us and then we spent the morning on the sledding hill. After lunch, it was time to put on our snowshoes and do some exploring. We followed a few trails, saw a glimpse of Mt. Rainier, and enjoyed the sun peeking out. And what did we do when we returned to the hut? You guessed right if you said sledding! We have some pretty unforgettable sledding stories to tell!

The next morning some of us enjoyed reading what we had written in the hut book last year and wrote a new entry for this trip. We said goodbye to our home in the mountains and headed back to the sno-park. We made record time with the help of the cold and rain and anxious children to see their families!

It was a very full three days (Cedar even lost a tooth!). I am so impressed with all the children’s perseverance, strength, courage, and support for one another. And thank you parents that came along! Woohoo, we could not have done it without you! I hope you have all recovered!

News from the Totally Awesome Tigers!

2010-02-24T15:47:00.000-08:00

It is exciting to be back and to see one another again! Oh, how we missed our friends!

As you may already know, we have a new group name...The Marvelous Martians are now theeeee...drum roll please...TOTALLY AWESOME TIGERS!

Did someone say pajama party?!! Well, I guess we all did at some time! The excitement level of the Tigers was very high today in anticipation of the fun to come tomorrow! Be sure to ask your child about our festivities Thursday night!

Math
It was soooo exciting to come back to school on the 100th day!!!!! Can you make an equation using more than 3 numbers that equals 100? It is challenging, but the Ferns were up for it! While the ferns were busy working their ways to 100, the Suns were working their ways to 100 in another way. There are so many numbers between 1 and 100 and it is sometimes hard to know which number comes next! The Suns worked on filling in the missing numbers on 100's charts!

What did the acorn say when it grew up? "Gee, I'm a tree!" He he! We have begun studying the wonderful and exciting world of geometry! Our unit begins with 2-D shapes. We are looking at shapes, naming them and describing them. It is interesting to think about shapes, and the many questions that arise. Is a triangle still a triangle if it is turned? Where does a circle begin? How many lines are in a circle? How long does a rectangle have to be to be a rectangle?

We had fun hunting for shapes in our classroom! We were excited to find that shapes are in everything! Literally, everything is made of shapes! To illustrate this, we made our own book "A Circle is a Circle Until..." that shows common shapes disguised in everyday items!

We created our own abstract circle art in spirit of the Abstract Circles of Wassily Kandinsky. Check these out on display now!

Language Arts
In honor of the 100th day of school, we chose a "100" question to write about. The questions were "What will you be like at the age of 100?" and "What do you think the world will be like in 100 years?" Students chose either question, wrote their thoughts, and created an illustration!

Phonics groups reviewed previous concepts with a matching blends game, a word family game, and a short vowel game.

We started a new read aloud The Chocolate Touch. We have so many predictions about how this story might unfold...are John's parents behind it all? Was it the magic chocolate? Hmmm....Guess we'll have to keep reading!

Theme
Art, art and more art! We've done 100th day of school art, shape art, and will be doing rain forest art! We will be learning about birds of the rainforest and will create a class mobile with watercolored birds!

Mission to Mars and More!

2010-02-04T19:28:00.000-08:00

Important Dates
February 12th - Half-day and Valentine's Day Party
February 15th-19th - Mid-Winter Break

February 24th-26th - Snowshoe Trip

Friday Workshop

No workshops this month

We had such a great time at the Pacific Science Center! Visiting the planetarium and Mission to Mars exhibit was a great finale to our study of space. A BIG thank you to the wonderful drivers who got us there and to the adults who came along! Here are a few pictures of us exploring what it might feel like to be on a mission to Mars!

Sitting behind the controls might seem like a simple task but what if you are spinning around and around at the same time?!

Gathering samples and doing simple repairs doesn't sound too difficult. Although wearing giant puffy gloves adds a bit of challenge!

All is well on the Gemini!

Building up pressure....keep pumping...lift off!

Can you put the pieces together to build the tallest possible structure that will receive maximum sunlight for solar power? Hmm......

There is just nothing easy about a mission to Mars, even walking is a challenge!

Houston, we have a problem...

This is mission control...turn the air filter off. Open hatch H...yes we see you, look to your left...

And a visit to the tropical butterfly house was a great start to our study of rainforests!

News from the Marvelous Martians

2010-01-30T08:41:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-27T19:44:00.001-08:00

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!

2010-01-20T17:02:00.001-08:00

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

2010-01-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-13T21:19:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-06T20:30:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-01-06T14:07:00.000-08:00

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.

News from the Marvelous Martians

2009-12-10T15:34:00.001-08:00

Important Dates and Reminders

Sunday December 13: National Cocoa Day! Enjoy a cup of Hot Cocoa:)

Portfolio Share: December 18 @ 9:00

Winter Holiday Community Celebration: December 18th from 1:00 to 3:00 Come celebrate winter holidays from around the world with us!

DROP EVERYTHING AND READ (DEAR) HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!! PLEASE HELP YOUR CHILD TO REMEMBER TO BRING HIS OR HER DEAR BAG TO AND FROM SCHOOL!

Math: This is such an exciting time of year, with so many things to celebrate! We are taking a break from our regular schedule to learn about some of the many winter holidays celebrated around the world! We had a blast learning about Hanukkah with Evan's family, learning to play dreidel and sampling yummy latkes! Evan has let us borrow his menorah and we will be lighting the candles each day of Hanukkah! Thank you Evan!

What do an ear of corn, a straw mat, 7 candles, a candle holder, a unity cup, a bowl of fruits and vegetables, and gifts have in common? These are the 7 symbols of Kwanzaa! It was really neat learning what each of these items symbolizes for this unique 7 day celebration. Ask your child to share some of this with you!

There was much story sharing when learned about Las Posadas, a holiday that recognizes the journey of Joseph and Mary and their search for a place to stay. Seems we could all relate to what it would feel like to have trouble finding a place to stay! What a fun celebration Las Posadas sounds like...each night for 9 days families journey from house to house "looking for a place to stay". Each night the journey ends in a different house, where they are welcomed to stay...and enjoy a grand fiesta complete with pinatas! We all agreed that 9 nights of partying must be really fun!

The final holiday we learned about was Junkanoo, a holiday that celebrates the freedom of slaves, observed primarily in the Bahamas. Junkanoo is another holiday that sounds like sooo much fun, but we wondered if we might fall asleep amidst all the fun! Junkanoo celebrations involve street parades with elaborate costumes and music lasting from midnight until dawn! WOW!

We have been using a variety of art techniques to create books that represent our explorations of these various holidays. Look for these to be shared during the Portfolio Share!

Language Arts: Our writing workshop pieces continue to focus on the idea of stretching out a small moment of our life into a book. Most of us have completed at least one book, and have had the opportunity to share them in author's chair! There have been books titled...Party Boy, It Was Fun, When I Got My Red Bump, My Thanksgiving, The Park...It is so amazing seeing the students grow as writers!

I found a shell. Kind of boring! While walking on the beach, I found a white, jaggedy, clam shell, covered with sharp, pointy barnacles. A bit more interesting! We've been practicing describing objects from around the room with interesting describing words...this might be something to try at home, too!

December is National Write to a Friend Month! (what will they think of next?!) Soooo, naturally, we wrote letters to our friends! Our letters were either "complimentary" or thank you letters.

Phonics groups this week focused on: short i, th, and st sm sp sk.

Theme: You may think it has been cold and dark in Olympia...well, you should try visiting Uranus!!!! Brrr!!! It is so cold and dark here! Be sure to ask your child why the rings on Uranus "go up and down" (this is kid lingo for vertical)! We've added another page to our planet books, and created Uranus puppets...Father of the sky! To create Uranus for our mobiles we painted with watercolors, sprinkling a coat of salt on the planet while it dried. The result is a blotchy effect, very similar to actual images of Uranus!

Investigations: Kynex, Legos, Art, Magnets, and Dreidel are the top choices this week! We have also used this time to create some special holiday gifts, but mums the word!

News from the Moon Toons!

2009-12-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

Important Dates
December 18th - Portfolio share 9:15-10:15

Friday Workshops
Zachary
Oliver

Here are a couple pictures from last week's Friday Workshops!

Hamster takes a trip to OCS to help teach all about hamsters!

A proud creator of a beeswax sculptor after taking a class taught by a Moon Toon.

Math
Pentominoes! What are pentominoes? Well, dominoes have two squares, triominoes have three squares, tetrominoes have fours squares, and, yup, you guessed it, pentominoes have five squares! We first practiced our spatial reasoning to discover the 12 pentominoes possible. This was great practice in group work and persistence. Group members needed to make sure they were communicating with all their fellow members to help keep track of the pentominoes made. We needed to make sure our pentominoes were unique by flipping or rotating them to make sure it was not already made.

Once we had them all made we gave them names like, "The Chair" or "The Snake." We then worked individually or with a partner to discover if we could make a "One Difference Loop" or "One Difference Line." This means we take one set of twelve pentomino pieces and arrange them in a loop such that only one square needs to be moved to change a shape into the one that follows. We recorded the loops and lines we found, check them out!
We then moved on to pentomino puzzles. We worked on fitting all our 12 pieces into a 5-by-12 grid puzzle board. This was challenging but with a few hints and a whole lot of perseverance, we did it! We also played a game with a partner using the same puzzle board. The object is to be the last player to play a piece, making it impossible for the opponent to fit in another. This definitely put our spatial skills to work!

After finding the perimeter of each pentomino, we shifted from two-dimensional to three-dimensional and explored which of our pentominoes could be folded into a box. Could we predict which square would be the bottom? We will end the week making two-cube boxes and making "Fill-the-Box Puzzles" where we will predict how many cubes could fit in a box that is flattened, explain their thinking, then test it. We will make our own puzzles for others to solve. All this work with perimeter, area, and moving into three-dimensional shapes is leading to a surprise visit from Mistress Wonka!

Language
In Literacy Centers this week, word ladders were introduced as a choice for some. Word ladders involve using spelling patterns and creating words by changing one or two letters. One may either climb their way up the picture ladder or make their way down.

We also wrote letters to our friends in space about what we do when we celebrate Christmas, Winter Solstice, or Hanukkah. This was fun as we needed to explain every part of the holiday as if to someone who had never heard of it! For some it was explaining who Santa is or what a Christmas tree is and where it comes from. Others explained all the things they do, like spending time with family, playing games, or opening presents. Some will take this piece and make edits and publish it in their best handwriting.

Theme
Uranus, the father of the Titans - wow! Be sure to check out the pictures the children drew of this long bearded one! We enjoyed listening to a few Greek myths while we sketched. Pegusus, Medusa, Hyrda, oh my! And poor Hercules and all the dangerous tasked he had to complete! We are also practicing our play and making props and scenery. Please help your child memorize their line(s) if they haven’t yet. Thank you!

We will also be creating a gift for each other that celebrates the wonderfulness of each of us. Stay tuned!

News from the Moon Toons

2009-12-02T20:05:00.000-08:00

Reminders
December 18th - Portfolio Share 9:00

Friday Workshops

December 4th
Kat - Beeswax Creations
Jack - Turtles

December 11th
Oliver - Making Pizza
Zachary - TBA

Math

We continue to practice measuring height, width, area and perimeter. We used geoboards to help us create shapes and determine the area. We also used cuisinare rods to experiment with different ways to cover the same area but with different perimeters. We found so many ways the area of 30 cm. sq could be shaped and which ways has the smallest perimeter or the largest.

We read "512 Ants on Sullivan Street" and practiced our doubling of numbers until we got to over 1,000! We then determining what numbers in our calculations were closest to 100 and 1,ooo. We had to prove it using addition or subtraction to show how far way our numbers were. Doubling numbers and algebra surfaced again as we solved a math mission with paper folds. How many sections would you have on a piece of paper if it was folded in half 6 times? We found it to be helpful to begin with one fold, then two folds, then three folds and then to create a T chart to record our information. Finding a pattern was helpful after that as it gets a little tricky to fold paper that tiny and to count all the little squares!

Language

In Writing Workshop this week, we continue to practice adding more description to our writing with adjectives. We practiced together turning simple sentences into one that really paints a picture for the reader. The sentence, "The cat ate food" was transformed by one group into "The fluffy fat cat ate smelly rotten tuna at Laguna Beach, California." Now that really paints a picture! Buddy shares has become a once a week routine after our quiet writing time. Everyone gets to read a story they are in the process of writing or have finished. They each share with another author followed by compliments from the listener. All the writers are eager to share and this allows everyone the opportunity and well as the chance to receive compliments and feedback from their peers.

One activity during literacy centers this week was responding to a journal prompt. We all thought of a moment from our past Thanksgiving weekend. It had to be a moment that was crystal clear in our minds so that when we closed our eyes we could see it happening like a movie. We then spent time writing our moments as clearly as we could so that other readers could really picture it and feel the moment. The writings were impressive! Journal entries allow us to experiment with different kinds of writing and provide entries that can be used and developed in future writing workshop stories if so desired.

In reading groups, some continue to explore a variety of folktales while others practice reading without the help of pictures. Some groups are in the process of choosing a chapter book they would like to read as a group or with a partner in a book club. We will begin book clubs in January!

Theme
Oh Saturn and your dusty, icy, rocky rings! We will get a little taste of you on Thursday so be sure to ask your child what they taste like! Also, check out the children's drawings of the Titan Kronos - amazing!!

We will have two guests this week! Ray from Tacoma Astronomical Society will visit us and share a presentation on the planets. And then on Friday Beth will make planet distance rulers with us! We are so lucky!

2009-12-02T15:12:00.000-08:00

NEWS FROM THE MARVELOUS MARTIANS!

Important Dates and Reminders:
Astronomy Presentation: Thursday, December 3 @ 1:00 Please join us!

Portfolio Share: December 18 @ 9:00

DROP EVERYTHING AND READ (AT HOME READING) HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!! PLEASE HELP YOUR CHILD TO REMEMBER TO BRING HIS OR HER DEAR BAG TO AND FROM SCHOOL!

Math:
The Suns. 3+2+1+4+2+3=??? This might look like a super tricky equation, but to those of us who learned to simplify equations this week it's just a loooooong way of writing 10+5! Phew! That is so much easier!

Do you know how many days old you are? It was quite the challenge, but with the help of calculators we actually figured this out (and practiced our calculating skills!)! It sure makes you feel old when you count the days! Although this was exciting enough on its own, we did not take this on simply for the fun of it. We will be using this information to calculate our age on each of the planets...be sure to ask your child about this Thursday evening!

The Ferns. Addition work continues! We have been practicing all sorts of addition...we drew pictures (there were trees and flowers and pumpkins galore!) and collected cubes to help us solve problems. We practiced these skills on our own, completing full page addition worksheets!!! It was actually quite amazing seeing The Suns apply the things they've been learning about addition to solve problems on their own! Yahoo!

We also practiced using a calculator to figure out how many days old we are, and will work with a partner to calculate our ages on each planet!

Language Arts:
It was quite exciting to start our week out by sharing the pieces of writing that we published! In Writing Workshop we are now working on streeeeetching out our writing into books. We have chosen a "small moment" from our lives and are working on stretching this out, telling what happened next, and then what....creating books with a beginning, middle and ending. From stories about visiting aunts to trips to the park, to going to parties, to tales of the origin of a tiny scar, everyone is working on skills at a just right level. Some of us are just learning to sound out words, including a middle and ending sound...others work on conventionalizing sight words...some work on adding spaces between words...and others on adding vowels! Writing Workshop continues to be a quiet, focused learning time enjoyed by many.

Reading groups this week focused on: summarizing in their own words and predicting what might come next, rereading for fluency, and using the pictures and beginning sound to decode words. While reading groups took place, students also worked on word ladders (starting with an initial word and changing one letter to create a new word, all the way down the rungs of a ladder) and played boggle junior.

Phonics groups this week will be working on: short e, s h sh, and sl sc sn sw.

Theme:
Saturn is the place to be this week! And while you're there check out that "E Ring"! We are fascinated with Saturn's rings--we now know why Saturn is nicknamed the King of Rings...but we wonder why the rings don't have more interesting names! A,B,C,D,E,F, and G just aren't creative enough for us, so we'll be giving those rings some new names! Stay tuned for an update on these!

We've added another page to our planet books and created both our Jupiters and Saturns for our planet mobiles. Jupiter was created using a tissue paper collage and Saturn was painted with Tempera paints. We are trying our best to make these look as life like as possible! It was particularly neat to see Jupiter added to our scale model of the solar system above the wipeboards--it is so BIG in comparison to the other planets! We had to recreate our sun and in doing so realized if we were to make it to scale it would have to be 109 times the width of our Earth which would be much bigger than our classroom! Wow!

We are excited to have a real live astronomer visit Thursday afternoon to share a slide show presentation about the universe with us! Be sure to ask your child about this! It should be exciting!

Investigations:
Much to my amazement, Kynex continue to be a favorite for many. The wheels are in especially high demand, and we've really had to work on coming up with ways to share these. It gives us a nice chance to practice our Giraffe Talk! Their has also been a revived interest in legos...a couple students have been creating obstacle courses for the animals from the blocks!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T09:03:00.000-08:00

Here our a few things we are thankful for...

Artwork and acrostic poems

Thanksgiving dinner....

Building this amazing shelter and others like it has been the focus for many of us during our outside time.

Tunes from the Moon Toons!

2009-11-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

Reminders
Friday Workshop
November 20th: Owen and Sequoia

December 11th - Field Trip
December 18th - Portfolio Share

Math
x? y? Are these confused and lost letters in our math? No, we’re doing algebra! We began our week using manipulatives to help us solve algebraic problems hands-on. We thought of each problem like a scale that need to be balanced. If we knew the "weight" on one side and part of the weight on the other, what would the missing weight need to be in order to make balanced? We used X cubes to help us, especially when some of us moved into trickier problems like 2x +3 + x = 2x + 5, what does X equal? Working on problems like this, we learned to simplify to make it easier and then checked our work by filling in the number we discovered was X. Look for examples of this work in your child’s Thursday packets.

We also played with patterns and algebra equations where the unknown number is variable. We used the image of a magic pot to help us. For example, we have a pot that has the function of x + 3 = y (x is the input and y is the output). Making a T chart, we recorded what we put in and what would come out. With this information, we could predict outcomes without needing to record the pattern for every number. We could see the pattern with the input of 1-10 but could use the function to determine how much would come out if we put in 16, 27, or 88! Next, we will look at T charts and the patterns and identify the function - tricky! Luckily, I have saved this task for Mistress Wonka, who announced today that she would be arriving on Thursday (all her functions (recipes) go all mixed up and they need organizing). She also needs help with creating new candy machines with secret "functions."

Language
The phone walked to the bowl. Huh? MAD LIBS! During Literacy Centers, a new choice is to practice our nouns, verbs, adventives and adverbs by playing Mad Libs with a partner. We have also begun creating our own by writing short stories, songs, poems, etc. and choosing key word to take out. We then label them appropriately with noun, verb, adjective, or adverb and give them to friends! Silly stories!

In Writing Workshop, lessons this week focused on ending sentences. We discussed those little periods, the curving questions marks, and those periods with a big surprised and excited hair - exclamation marks!!! We are all working on remembering that every sentence needs some kind of ending and what we decide affects how it may be read. And besides, those words may just decide to jump up and run away if we don’t put something to stop them! We also practiced using quotation marks when someone is speaking in a story. "And if a child was not already including dialogue in a story, they sure are now!" says Jeriann.

Theme
Wow! Mars has proven to be one of the most fact filled planets! Did you know that the largest inactive volcano in our solar system in on Mars?! Olympus Mon is three times higher than Mt. Everest and the base of the volcano is the area of Arizona! AND, there is a canyon that makes our Grand Canyon look like a little crack. It is as long as the United States! Yes, we had fun finding SO many facts!

As we take our imaginary trip through the solar system, we record imaginative adventures and Mars was quite interesting! It seemed many of us had the misfortune to land right on top of Olympus Mon or deep in the canyon or in the middle of a terrible dust storm. Some of us discovered very friendly aliens who will continue with us on our journey! We will conclude our time on Mars with a "test for life"experiment, probe drop experiment, and designing our own mission to Mars, complete with plans for a rover/probe.

NEWS FROM THE MARVELOUS MARTIANS!

2009-11-18T15:27:00.000-08:00

Important Dates and Reminders:

Workshops: November 20: Evan~milkshakes

Field Trips:
December 11~TBA

No school:
Thanksgiving Holiday: November 26 and 27Winter Break: December 19 through January 3Parent Meeting: December 2 @ 6:00

Portfolio Share: December 18 @ 9:00

DROP EVERYTHING AND READ (AT HOME READING) WILL OFFICIALLY BEGIN ON MONDAY!!

Math:

The Suns. Our work with addition continues in many forms! We started the week by creating butterflies that had a standard number of wings, antennae, and legs. Each of us picked a number of butterflies to create and then figured out how many wings, antennae and legs there were all together. We also used color tiles to make arrangements of numbers and divide them into 2 parts, creating addition equations to represent the groups. Looking at all of our work, we discovered many different ways to make the numbers 5 and 6! It was fun learning a new addition game...Tic Tac Toe. To play this game you roll 2 number dice, each with the numbers 1,2 and 3 and then add the numbers together. You then place a marker on the corresponding number on your board and play until collectively you get three in a row! Our week will end with a game that involves adding together handfuls of different objects.

The Ferns. Many of us are excited to have new "Math Packs" (a collection of assorted addition worksheets)! We spent some familiarizing ourselves with the new packs so that we are able to work on these independently during choosing time. We're having lots of fun learning new addition games that are helping us practice our addition facts, as well as challenging us to discover multiple ways to create numbers. In 5 in a Row we roll 2 dice numbered 1 through 6 (with actual numbers, not dots!) and then add the 2 numbers together. We work together with a partner, covering the answers on our board as we go, until together we cover five spaces in a row! So exciting! Dot Addition was a fun challenge! The boards for this game had 4 numbers on them, like 6, 8, 10, and 12 or 8, 9, 10 and 15. The challenge was to use dot cards (collection of dot cards with numbers 2 through 5) to fill in the board. For instance to create the number 9 you might use a 2, a 4 and a 3 or a 5 and a 4 or a 2, a 2, and a 5. After filling a board once, you record your equations and then try to fill it a second time creating a whole new set of equations. Tricky! We will end our week using colored tiles to create groupings for the number 12.

Language Arts:

This was an exciting week! Not only are we publishing our first pieces of writing, but we also had our first experience with reading groups! We spent our Writing Workshop time this week working on "fancying" up our chosen pieces of writing. This process involved rereading, looking for places to add more detail, for words we left out, for words would like to try to spell again, for capitals, or periods. Everyone worked so hard to fancy up their work at a "just right" level, creating pieces of writing that demonstrate their best effort!

In reading groups, one group focused on using the pictures to help them, while another group focused on locating reoccurring sight words and using background knowledge combined with beginning sounds to figure out challenging words, and a third group worked on using an index to locate information and summarizing what they read in their own words. While groups were reading with me, some students decorated their DEAR (drop everything and read) bags, while others worked on word ladders (an activity where you change one letter at a time to make a series of words), all eventually participating in an independent choosing time.

Phonics groups this week will focus on ch, short a, and l blends. All groups will work on word sorts.

DEAR WILL OFFICIALLY BEGIN ON MONDAY!!!!

Theme:

Well...you'll be happy to know that we made a safe landing on Mars, despite the dust storm! We are covered in red dust, but still learning lots! Did you know that Mars had ice on it's poles...2 moons...and has a day almost equal in length to our day? We haven't seen any Martians yet, but we are looking! We've been busy creating Mars pages for our planet books, as well as puppets of the Roman God Mars, the God of War...bet you can guess why Mars the Red Planet is named after this God. We had an interesting discussion about war...I am truly amazed to hear the thoughts students have about big topics like this! This is an amazing group with quite sophisticated thoughts.

With Thanksgiving on the near horizon we have been talking a lot about the things we are thankful for in our own lives. We're are working on compiling a list and participated in a thank you circle, where we all gave thanks to one another for specific things we've done, like helping to make a paper airplane, or for playing a game together, or for sitting next to someone at lunch...a very sweet ritual. This is our first thank you circle of the year, but there will surely be more to follow! We will be learning some of the history of this holiday and will be create a sequence of pictures representing this story.

Investigations:

Our choosing time continues to be a favorite time of the day. Kynex have still been a top choice this week, although there has been a bit of renewed interest in the Casita area!

We learned to draw turkeys step by step (harder than you may think!) and created lovely turkeys that we painted with coffee! Look for these on display soon! Gobble Gobble! By the way, does anyone know the official name for the red thing below the turkeys beak? We've been calling it the "gobble gobble"...very scientific!

News From the Marvelous Martians!

2009-11-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

Hello All! I am so excited that our blog is now up and running! A big THANK YOU to Paul for creating this! My hope is that the newsletter brings a deeper understanding of what’s going on in the classrooms each week, perhaps providing a starting point for conversations with your children about their time at school. Happy reading and please know that I welcome any comments or suggestions you may have regarding the newsletter, as it is truly intended as a way to keep y’all in the loop!

Important Dates and Reminders
Workshops: November 20: Evan~milkshakes

Field Trips:

November 13th ~ Kennedy Creek, Olympia Center, Library

December 11~TBA

No school:

Thanksgiving Holiday: November 26 and 27
Winter Break: December 19 through January 3

Parent Meeting: December 2 @ 6:00

Portfolio Share: December 18 @ 9:00

Math

We start our days with Math, which starts at approximately 9:20 and lasts until 10:15. Currently, students are divided into 2 separate math groups, the Suns and the Ferns (ask your child which group he or she is in!). Typically I work with each group for half of the math period. The other half of the period is spent finishing work started during their time with me or participating in an independent choosing time. During choosing time, students have the opportunity to revisit and practice a variety of math games they learned during their time with me, to work on their “Math Packs” (a collection of relevant worksheets), to practice their Math Facts, or to build and create with some of our interesting manipulatives. I will not typically go into detail about the choices offered during this time as they will have been previously explained in the summaries of the weekly explorations of each group.

The Suns. So far this year we’ve explored patterns and have been working on solidifying our sense of numbers…practicing our one to one correspondence (pointing to and counting one object at a time), comparing numbers and gaining a general sense for just how many each number is (for instance a group of 10 pennies looks quite different from a group of 10 chairs, but there is still 10 in each group). Throughout all this, we’ve also been practicing writing our numbers.

This week we are taking our math skills to the next level and have begun work with simple addition problems and are learning multiple ways to solve these problems. An example of a problem we worked on was: There were 3 aliens and each alien had 3 eyes. How many eyes were there all together? The group was given this problem and was asked to solve it however they would like. Some drew pictures and some used cubes to represent the eyes. We compared results and methods and worked on solving a number of problems using similar methods. We are even learning how to represent our work using equations! We will finish our week by learning the game Chips in a Cup (an old favorite for many of the Ferns!), in which you have a set number of chips (we will work with numbers less than 6 to start out) and a partner hides some of the chips under a cup, and you try to figure out how many are hidden by counting the number of chips left showing. This is a great way to reinforce the concept that numbers can be broken into parts and that there are many ways to make a number. This would be a fun one to try at home with pennies!

The Ferns. We have been busy, busy, busy this year! We started the year out with some review work that focused mainly on continuing to build number sense…combining problems (You have 12 cherries and grapes. How many of each could you have?), a variety of number combination games (like Chips in a Cup described above), counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10,s…We have also spent some time practicing writing our numbers. After all this, we began exploring and learning about place value, using our “base-10 blocks”. We practiced building and reading numbers and learned a really fun game Race to 100, which continues to be a favorite during choosing time! Ask y our child for details about this one!

This week we are practicing some strategies for solving addition problems in our head. One method that we learned is called “near doubles”. This is for problems like 4+5 or 4+6, that are pretty close to being a double like 4+4 (we are working on memorizing the doubles up to 10 that we don’t yet know…so this may be something to practice in the car!). The near doubles strategy entails turning problems into a “double” addition problem and then adding on the extra. For instance, 4+5 would become 4+4+1 (the double of 4 plus 1). We practiced this in a dice game called “Near Doubles”. We are also working on memorizing addition facts at a level just right for each of us. We’ve created flashcards of problems that are hard for us to remember. To help us practice one tricky fact, we created story problems, illustrating the solution and writing the equation both horizontally and vertically. These story problems will become a choice during choosing time next week so that we solve each other’s problems!

Language Arts

Language Arts falls right after recess, at 10:50 and lasts until 12:00. We start each Language Arts session with some quiet resting to center ourselves so that we are ready for learning and to help ease the transition from recess. Mondays and Wednesdays are our Writing Workshop days, when we focus on writing. Each Writing Workshop lesson is comprised of a brief mini-lesson (sample lessons include how to sound out words, “fancying” up a piece of writing, and encouraging new genres of writing) followed by approximately 30 minutes of independent writing (this time varies throughout the year, lengthening as the year progresses). Once a week we have “Author’s Chair”, which is a time for students to share a finished piece of work. During the independent writing, I circulate amongst the students offering help sounding out words, brainstorming ideas, and with editing. Once a week we have phonics groups (right now this is on Tuesday, but will be switching to Thursday soon). Students are grouped with others that share similar phonics skills, and each week complete an activity that helps strengthen and build new phonemic awareness. Activities include word/picture sorts, worksheets, and games. We have been learning and practicing a variety of Language Arts games and activities to prepare us for an independent Language Arts choosing time that will begin shortly. During this time I will meet with reading groups. We also spend time each week practicing our handwriting skills. Kindergartners are focusing on upper-case letters, while first graders are focusing on both upper and lower-case letters. Each afternoon we have a Reading Workshop for approximately 15 minutes, which is a time for students to independently read books at their level. During this time I circulate, and make time to read with each student at least once a week.

This is such an enthusiastic and creative group of writers! I so enjoy seeing the topics everyone chooses to write about! This week there was a series of diagrams with a tire and a nail and an uh oh(!) flat tire, a collaborative book about a made up group of beings “the zoo zoos”, a story about a meteorite falling from the sky and having to call the fire department, and a story about the Samhein celebration and jumping off the hay pile! On Thursday, we will collect all of our finished pieces and choose a piece to “fancy” up…to publish (just as someone going to a party might get fancied up, we are fancying up our work to share with others!). The first step in the fancying process will simply be to choose a piece for fancying! Next week we will reread our pieces and look for places where we might have missed a word or would like add more detail. Our phonics groups for this week focused separately on: a review of all the consonants and words that begin with these sounds, a review of all the short vowels, and gr, cr, tr, and br. This week we practiced our handwriting by choosing a space word to write using our very best printing. We will soon make diagrams to go along with these words, creating a matching game for our pocket chart!

Theme

Each afternoon we have theme right after lunch from 1:00 to 1:45. This is the time where the majority of our theme related activities take place…although they are also intertwined with many of our Math and Language Arts lessons. Generally students spend at least one theme time each week in mixed age groups. We call these K-4 groupings “families”.

As I am sure you well know, we have been studying space this year!!! We started our explorations here on Earth learning about our very own rocky planet, what causes the seasons and how the Earth’s rotation causes us to experience day and night! Our explorations then took us to the moon, the sun and even Mercury! We have had so much fun traveling to and studying these far out objects! Our journey has now taken us to Venus where we will be for the remainder of this week (if we can last that long!), before heading to Mars!

We started the week by learning all about Venus and creating a page for our planet books all about Venus. Each page includes fact about the planet, as well as an oil pastel drawing of the planet. It was interesting to learn that Venus is the hottest planet even though it is not the closest to the sun! We also learned about the Roman Goddess of love, Venus, whom the planet is named after…supposedly because astronomers believed that under the cloudy atmosphere of Venus they would find a very beautiful world, much like our Earth, and the beautiful Goddess Venus. Instead, they were surprised to find a sulfury, carbon-dioxide filled world littered with active volcanoes! Ahhh! We made popsicle stick puppets of the Goddess of Love to add to our growing collection of God/Goddess puppets! It was interesting to see the different ways each student imagined Venus would look…we even had an interesting discussion about whether or not it would be ok for her to wear pants!

Our week will finish up with an afternoon with our friends the Moon Toons. This will be our first introduction to Buddy Reading this year! Beginning readers are paired with more advanced readers that will be able to help them with their reading. Be sure to ask your child about this fun and exciting tradition!

Investigations

We end each day with Investigations! Investigations is typically 45 minutes long and is a time that consists primarily of an independent choosing time. Choices during this time vary from day to day and include things like: games (we all love playing and learning new board games, so if you have one you’d like to share, feel free to bring it in some day!), art center, casita, doll house, Kynex (these are the big hit right now!), clay, magnets, puzzles, light bright, blocks, etc. This is a wonderful time for students to interact socially and engage in creative play together. This is also a time for art, and we often spend part of the time creating!

Kynex, Kynex and more Kynex!!!! Last week it was checkers and chess, and now it’s Kynex! There have been a plethora of interesting vehicles created, as the Kynex play has been focused mainly on creations with wheels. And what fun with vehicles be without ramps?! It is fun exploring a variety of ramps with different inclines!

While making our Venus puppets we felt inspired to create puppets of ourselves and other beings! And then we of course needed a puppet show stage! So presto! We transformed an ordinary paper towel box into a couple of beautiful stages! Once there’s a stage the performances come naturally…we were lucky enough to view some impromptu shows, complete with tickets! This choice will be around for a while, so we’ll see what else develops!

Amidst all this, we made some time to create our Venuses, which will eventually become part of our planet mobile. We used white crayons, and yellow, orange, and brown water colors to create this sulfury world.

Are you still there? I promise not all newsletters are so lengthy! For this first one, though, I wanted to explain a bit about classroom routines and give a brief history of what’s been going on up to this point. Hope you have a lovely week!

News from the Moon Toons

2009-11-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

Reminders

Field Trip
Friday, November 13th - Pick up at the Olympia Library

Friday Workshops
November 20th: Sequoia and Owen

As you may or may not know, Mistress Wonka came in for a surprise visit last week. She worked with her little Oompas in creating the most fantastic buildings and elevators. Buildings with caramel rivers on one floor, and a chocolate forest on another - crazy! These buildings could go as high as they like as well as below ground. After she left, the children and I played in the elevator of these buildings. Floors above ground were positive numbers and floors below were negative. We put together combinations of positive and negative numbers, which we called changes, to see what results we would get. Most of this work was done through games, some of which involve imaginary trips in Mistress Wonka’s elevator, up and down her fantastic building. Thinking about ups and downs helps children learn how to describe mathematical changes. They will use these skills in both science and math as they describe and graph how things change. Here is an example of a problem we might do:

I got on the elevator on the +2 floor. I pushed the +3 button and then the -6 button. What floor am I on?

Some did a little algebra when solving a problem like this:

I got on the elevator on the +3 floor. I pushed a button and then I pushed the +1 button. I ended up on the - 4 floor. What was the other button I pushed?

We also read "Centipede’s 100 Shoes" and used our problem solving skills to answer the question, is the author’s math correct? As everyone went to work to answer this question, I witnessed so much creative and thoughtful problem solving. From using repeating addition, multiplication, subtractions and pictures everyone was able to answer this question in their own way.

During language arts we have all been serious writers these past weeks as we dedicate ourselves to our stories. Over the past weeks, we had fun exploring how an idiom, a simile, or an onomatopoeia can add description to our stories. The children have already begun using some of these techniques. Yesterday I read a few examples, like "Vroom!" and "...as green as a leaf."

We have officially begun our literacy centers! While some children read with me in reading groups others are making choices around the room. Currently choices include: reading poetry and recording one that we particularly like or authoring our own , reading a magazine article and writing a summary, reading a space book and recording facts, journaling, reading jokes and riddles and sharing a favorite, and word sorts. The children keep track of their choices and work in their Literacy Folder.

Buddy reading has begun with our friends, the Marvelous Martians. Readers are paired up so that one child may help another as they practice reading. Buddy reading is a wonderful opportunity for the elder children to share their skills and help teach their younger friends.

In our journey through the universe we are currently in our solar system planet hopping. You can find on us Venus but we will moving along as the smell, heat, and atmosphere are a little overwhelming! We were fortunate to meet the beautiful Greek Goddess Aphrodite and her magical girdle. You will find our incredible portraits of her on our door.

We have read several short folktales from around the world that tell stories of seasons, stars, and planets. The children have selected "Day and Night" as their favorite and we are in the process of creating a play based on this tale. We will create a script and work on memorizing our lines. Stay tuned for a performance date!

On Thursday we will practice making a triorama (similar to a diorama). We will use a scene from our "Day and Night" story as our inspiration. This will also be a tool the children can use in future book responses.

Welcome to our newsletter!

2009-11-05T18:01:00.000-08:00

Our newsletter blog will provide you with wonderful information about what your child is experiencing and learning at OCS. Each week we will share with you all the inside scoop about the math games we are playing, what we are reading and writing about and where we are in our journey through space. Reminders for Friday workshops for kids and parents will be included as well as dates for field trips and other important happenings. We look forward to using this new venue to share classroom experiences, photos, artwork and stories with you. Entries will typically be posted on Wednesdays. We enjoy receiving feedback so please feel free to comment after reading a post.

Happy reading!