Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween!

Gooooood eveniiiiing.... =]

I hope you all had a happy and safe Halloween!  I know I had a lovely time after work Trick-or-Treating with my niece and nephews around our neighborhood.

[picture]

There was so much excitement in our class today, I felt so lucky to be a part of today's experience.  And it was super neat to see all the different costumes that the students brought in.  Here are a few pictures of some kids on the playground, taking on their character roles!







More pictures to come soon!
Love, Gaby

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Moving Forward With Our Party!

Hello all!

This week has been quite a different one with all these short days!  It just flew by us!  But we still took time to do a lot of hard work!  Check out how the students have been making the different signs and decorations to put up around our class!















The students started thinking about how to make the houses for our neighborhood, so we checked in about how we would set up our tools when making them.  Vikas and Merrick are some of our tallest friends so we used them as a guide to see where the door frame needed to be.






Friends used an overhead projector to stencil on the lines that would be needed for the door frame.


And then they reinforced the cardboard with tape so that the loose pieces would stay together.



Friends also worked together to pave the roads in our neighborhood!




Hope to see you Monday and/or Tuesday after school to help with our houses!

Love, Gaby

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Preparations for our Halloween Party!

Good evening all!

I'm sure you've heard the buzz about how things are moving along as we get closer and closer to our Halloween party! We are putting our plans into action now and are reaching out to you for assistance.  We would love for some families to volunteer their time and come in to help us in our food making stations, but we are also asking for help in gathering ingredients.  The students have written out sign up sheets, which can be found on the information table by our classroom door.  Please pop in any time and check them out!





 If you'd like to sign up, but can't come in, feel free to email me!

Also, let me just say that the Student Led Conferences have been such a pleasure.  It's neat to see the students speak to their work and their learning.  Thank you all for taking the time to come in and share in the excitement!


In other news, the students have created some challenges for themselves to think about when they go home.  Since we've been exploring mixing different colors, many students were thinking of what names they could give to the mixtures they created, such as lemon yellow,  or pumpkin orange.  So if your child finds an interesting artifact and believe it matches the shade of a certain color that we found, bring it in!


FRi



Have a great rest of your week!
Love, Gaby

Friday, October 19, 2012

Documenting Our Findings and Fun at the Park

Happy Friday!

Thank you to everyone who has wrestled with the >>>Student Led Conference Sheet<<< online.  Ah, technology... I've got a love-hate relationship with it sometimes =]

In brighter news, the Kindergartners have been very busy testing new theories and documenting their data as we applied the scientific process to our second color mixing experiment.  This time, we used yellow and red food coloring to test what various shades of yellow, red, and orange we could find.




As the friends created their unique mixtures, they used a color mixing tracking sheet to document how many pipettes of each color they used, by using tally marks.



Prior to the start of our testing, we wrote up the steps to the scientific process on our white board.  When we were done, we came back together to check our work and write down our results and conclusion.  It turns out our hypothesis was correct:  Red, Yellow, and Clear mixed together did make orange.  Yet, as you can see, the students found a wide array of shades of orange!



Throughout the week, some friends have tried using our new Color Recipe charts to track how many drops of tempera paint they used in their testing to get certain shades of color, again using tally marks.






However, friends were having a hard time keeping their work organized using the tally marks.  We brought this dilemma to Revisiting Meeting and brainstormed some ideas to help us better understand how to use tally marks and the information they provide.






We ended our week by reconnecting with our 8th Grade Buddies!  Today we met at the nearby park to embark on a friendly game of Duck Duck Goose.  This was another fun way to break the ice and get to know our new friends better.  It was lovely to see the students being so sociable and open to stepping out of their comfort zone, slowly but surely.








I hope you're all having a great weekend!
Love, Gaby