Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Our first week of 2015 was a big success!  Here are some snapshots from our time together.

Open Choice Time has some new offerings for the children to delve into, as well as some oldies but goodies.

Construction Area

Check out how friends work towards making either upward or outward expanding structures.  Which tools do you think would be the most stable?  Why?

Ten Friends

How many ways can you find the sum of ten?  Friends are practicing writing their own equations as well as number writing practice.

Message Writing

Who have you written a message to this year?  Come over and check out our new graph to help document which people our class writes to the most.  Parents?  Siblings? Friends? Or someone else?

Sensory Table

Friends are practicing taking turns being the person to touch, smell, and listen to certain provocations.  After thinking of a word to describe the sensation, friends are generating lists of different adjectives to keep track of people's reactions.

History Table

By looking at an image, friends are asked to theorize whether the still is from the past, present, or the future and to explain their thinking.  What evidence can you find in the image to help support your guess?

Water Coloring

Friends are choosing reference images to help inspire them to draw something they would like to paint with different water coloring tools.

Homework Shares

Friends have often inspired other friends to try new things at home after sharing work or skills they have practiced outside of class.  Our Learning Extensions are now a living part of our classroom and friends are able to teach a peer what they are mastering at home.  The listener is then challenged to document what key information they heard to capture the memory of what they learned from their friend.

A friend sharing a story she wrote at home with her mom.

Here, the presenter is explaining the different steps to bowling.

Friends testing a kite made out of recycled materials.

For Number Talks, I have invited the friends to start writing their equations next to their ideas.

Check out the list friends generated with Clara for their Language Activity!

This week in Art, after noticing what similarities and differences different birds in nature have, Niki invited the class to create their own imaginary birds using whatever inspiration that could find in the classroom. 

In P.E. with Clara, the class dove into practicing their dribbling skills.  Ask your child what challenges or tips they have to help them dribble in place.

Thank you to Sam for being our Family Reader this week!

We joined our 7th Grade Buddies for a Walk and Talk to the neighboring park.  It's nice to see these friends reconnect after winter break!

This week, we celebrated one of our friends' 6th birthday by singing Happy Birthday (with Cha Cha Cha's), Thank You For Being  A Friend, playing Doggy, Doggy, Where's Your Bone?, giving Special Birthday Messages, and sharing a special homemade treat.  

We also welcomed back another one of our friends who had been away, traveling and learning in Colombia!  After nearly a month gone, we were happy to learn about his adventures with his family and how coffee is processed!

In other news, here's a new fun game we have been playing in class: the Dictionary Game!  I look through the dictionary to find a definition to read to the kids.  After reviewing the part of speech of the word and reading the definition twice, I ask friends to quietly raise their hand if they have a guess of what the actual word could be.  We check the definition together to see if the guess could work, and if it does and the class agrees that it matches, I show them the page.  It has a new favorite!  Feel free to play together at home with your own dictionary!

 Love, Gaby