Happy New Year!

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!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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!

Apples, Salmon and Orcras, Oh My!

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!