It's a new year!

Happy New Year!  Returning from Winter Break, we welcome Elena to our class!  We are excited to have her and its been heart-warming to see the different ways friends have reached out to include her and help her learn new routines!  Thanks everyone and a huge WELCOME to Elena!  We are so glad  you've joined us!  Now we are a class of 8!

Cardinals and Birch trees!  Would you believe we used combs for painting?!

With the start of the new year, we found ourselves itching to travel!  We said good bye to the Middle Ages and ventured through the time machine once again.  This time our final destination was a bit closer to the present day, the 1960s!

Here we are right after our time machine  travels...studying "artifacts" trying to figure out "when" we are.  Wow! Look at that phone!   

Our studies of this era began with a focus on a very interesting artist of the time period, Faith Ringgold.  Faith grew up and continues to live in New York City.  She is famous for her story quilts, a mix of painted canvas, written stories and quilted frames.  If you aren't familiar with her work you may want to google her...her art is quite beautiful and inspiring!  So inspiring that we created our own version of her story quilts!  Faith has authored and illustrated a number of books.  One of these books, Tar Beach is a story from one of her quilts telling of her time spent on the roof of the apartment building she lived in during hot summers in New York, lovingly donned Tar Beach because it was covered in tar paper.  In this book, she flies over the George Washington Bridge, her favorite view from Tar Beach.  Inspired by this, we each chose a place we would like to fly to as the central watercolor painting in our story quilts.  Oh the fun we'd have if only we could really fly to Dolphin World or Alaska or the Bahamas!  Be sure to check these out next time you are in the classroom, and if you have a moment ask to see the biography our class wrote about Faith Ringgold!

Our version of Faith Ringgold's story quilts.

Much of Faith's work focuses on the Civil Rights Movement, which nicely led us to our current study of Martin Luther King, Jr!  So far we've talked about what we already knew about Martin (including many comments of how loving and peaceful and great he was..."he was a hero"...yes, yes he was!) and what we wonder about Martin and his life (how old was he when he died, how did he do so many great things, how did he learn to be peaceful...what great questions!).  We worked with our older buddies writing about examples of what things were like for African Americans during this time, what Martin hoped things would be like, and how things have changed today.  With such a strong desire for justice and equality, it was very difficult for most groups to understand how things could ever have been as they were.  I loved hearing tidbits of conversations as I moved from group to group "it was so unfair" "the color of your skin doesn't matter" "I would have let people sit anywhere on the bus" "we're all the same on the inside"...soooo sweet!  I love knowing that these kids are our future!

Working together to learn more about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his amazing work. 

In math we have delved into the world of number combinations, which will soon lead us into additon.  We have learned many new games and are solving puzzles that are helping us to learn the different combinations that numbers can be broken into.  For instance, for the game On and Off, we toss a given numbers of counters, let' s say 6, onto a piece of paper.  2 land on the paper and 4 land off...from this we learn that 6 can be broken down into 2 and 4, and that 2 and 4 go together to make 6.  The next time we toss our chips, if 3 land on and 3 land off, we learn that 6 can also be broken into 3 and 3.  Feel free to try this one at home (or ask your child to teach you Chips in a Cup!)!  We are playing many similar games and are becoming more and more familiar with number combinations.  One sly fellow whispers into my ear each day "I know why we're playing this game...it's so we can see which numbers go together to make 10."  I guess the cat's out of the bag...these games aren't just for fun!

I was quite impressed watching everyone take on the challenge of Crayon Puzzles!  Some solved problems such as: I had 5 red and blue crayons, how many of each could I have?  Others worked on problems like: I had eight blue and red crayons.  I had the same number of each.  How many of each color did I have? or I had 11 red and blue crayons.  I had more red than blue.  How many of each could I have?  These problems were tricky (in an enjoyable way I think) and it was neat seeing the variety of strategies kids used to solve the problems!  Afterwards, I was asked if we could pretty please do more of these next week!

Writing Workshop continues as a focused time of inspired writing.  From lengthy "chapter books" to illustrated pictures and everything in between, everyone is working at a place that is just right.  It is so fun seeing the topics that everyone chooses...we currently have stories about riding unicorns, time traveling cats, play dates with friends, favorite pets, detectives, new friends, and Disney characters.  Some stretch themselves as writers, trying to sound out beginning sounds, others work on using capitals and periods, and some work on conventionalizing spelling of common sight words.  Phonics groups currently include work on beginning sounds/letter recognition, digraphs (sh, ch, th) and word families (short i: it, ig, ill)

An example of our word study work...how many words can you make in the at, it or ill families?

In Reading Workshop we spend time each day reading at a just right level.  For some this is reading pictures; Others read beginning readers and some spend their time reading harder early readers.  We continue to learn new strategies, focusing on making sure we understand what we are reading, using pictures to help us, and on using the beginning and ending sounds of a word to help us figure it out!  Learning to read is something that takes lots of practice, but is so rewarding!

 

Such focused readers!

The countdown to the 100th day of school has officially begun!  11 days to go!  We are looking forward to celebrating this milestone with traditions from years past (the 100 piece trail mix we hear so much about from our elders!) and...well, I can't give that away quite yet!  I bring this up to say...wow!  I can't believe that we've been together this long!  It's been a fabulous year and I have loved seeing everyone grow in so many ways!

It's time to move!  Hi! my name is Ali and I work in a button factory...(ask your child about this one!)

Happy New Year!

I hope you have had a wonderful start to your new year!  We are so happy to be together to share in learning, playing, laughing, growing and loving!

Math
We have been SO busy in math and have done so much since our last update.  We have focused on both time and money.  We had fun playing with clocks and especially playing with all the coins!  We will continue to work with both of these concepts in our morning circle as it takes practice, practice, practice.

Subtraction is the new name of the game!  We are diving right in, playing games like Number Line, 2 Less, Race to a Zero, Four or Five in a Row, and The Difference Game.

Number Line - One partner rolls both dice and adds the numbers together.  The other partner does the same.  Partner one takes the smaller number away from the bigger number.  A gem is taken from that number off the number line on her side.  Switch.



2 Less - Roll the die.  What is 2 less than that number? Remove a gem.

Race to Zero - Start with 100. The roll of the die tells you how much you can take away.  Not enough ones?  Let's regroup and take a ten, turn it into ten bits and ta-da! - We are on our way to borrowing!

Our multiplication group has been working so hard.  We are now focusing on multiplying by 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 as we prepare ourselves for double digit multiplication (like 45 x 6).  Yahoo!

Literacy
I love watching the flow of writing topics change throughout the year.  There will be times were half the class is so excited about same topic (yes, I am referring to the Angry Bird phase!) and then times where every child is writing about something different.  We currently have stories about bank robbers, pixies, pets on a trip to Paris, Garfield, fairies, neighbors, Angry Bird superheros, cute aliens, dog friends...  Some are putting dialogue in their story for the first time and learning to use quotation marks, others are noticing that they remembered capitals and periods the first time through and others are extending their stories more and more, choosing paper with more lines and thinking about how to carefully word their sentences.  We LOVE writing!

We also LOVE reading!  I brought in a big basket of  new books which has been very exciting and are being devoured.  We have been using mental images and predictions to help us with our comprehension in our own reading.  We have really enjoyed sharing our predictions out loud during our read alouds and connecting our predictions to the text or what we know about the topic.  We finished Sticks and Stones and Doggy Bones which was a BIG favorite. It was about dogs at a dog school who are dealing with a dog that isn't being nice and making fun of other dogs. It provided great discussions and practice in making guesses as to why he might be treating other dogs that way.  We found giving lots of kindness and having caring friends was just what he needed. We are now reading Maybelle in the Soup which is about a cockroach, her dream to taste food before it touches the floor and the adventure it takes her on.  Lots of giggles in this one!

We all continue with our own word patterns...final consonant blends, crazy r, open/closed sounds to know when to use a pattern (like "ou" or "ow"), magic e, -ck and -ll with baby vowels.

Theme
As you know, we said farewell to the Middle Ages with a traditional feast.  I think it was pretty much agreed that the food of the Middle Ages is not the most appealing to our children's tastes - although the handmade pretzels were a hit!!

Back in the time machine we went and surprising found ourselves in the 1960s!! Say what?!  That crazy time machine!  We are spending a few weeks learning about two amazing individuals that were doing something incredible during this time.  One is an artist, Faith Ringgold, who was creating her own art style combining paint, sewing and writing to make story quilts.  We have learned a bit about her life, what influenced her art and how she worked to get art galleries to show work from ALL people.  We have so loved trying on her art style and creating our own story quilt using her book Tar Beach as a jumping off point to share where we might fly to.  Check out our classroom wall to see these incredible pieces of work.

We are also learning about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and his work that helped change the world.  After we finish our timeline of his life, we will focus more on his work and important words like, tolerance, equality, leader, friendship, love, peace, respect and dream.

Art
Please check out our adorable snowpeople on our wall.  We played with perspective and drawing our snowperson from many different perspectives...far away, up close of the head or belly, side view...all ways = super cute!

Field Trips
Wow!  The food bank LOVED all our help earlier this month!  The children loved preparing bags for the For Kids program and filled hundreds of bags for kids who need extra food at home. 

Filling up the bags!!