A Peek into Our 4 Day Week

It has been a great second week of school!  This week we have been busy focusing on being kind, learning about the life cycle of a monarch butterfly, and sorting shoes by their attributes in math. Below is a little recap of our week.

What does being kind even mean?

The focus of the first 6 weeks of school is establishing a positive, safe, and kind classroom.  With this, I'm constantly modeling and suggesting language that the children could use with one another as a way to set a positive tone in the classroom.  One of the first things I focus on is kindness and there is no other great way to incorporate a discussion on kindness than through some great read alouds.  

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had a great discussion about our differences and excepting those differences.  We read the book It's Okay to Be Different.  The children were then asked to complete the sentence "It's okay to ___________."  The children then drew a self-portrait of themselves.

On Wednesday, we read the book Hooway for Wodney Wat, which is about a character who has a difficult time pronouncing his r's and for this he is made fun of by his peers.  After the story, we discussed what the characters were doing that wasn't kind and what they could do differently.  Then, we completed an activity that involved a brown egg and a white egg.  The children shared what was different and what was the same about these eggs.  Then, I asked the question "What about the inside of the eggs?  How would they be different and how would they be the same?"  Most children thought that there would be chicks inside the brown egg and I was told that the white eggs were for cooking.  They were surprised when I broke open the brown egg and there was no chick!  The children immediately noticed that the inside of both eggs were exactly the same.  So, we had a discussion about how we may look different on the outside, but on the inside we were the same just likes the eggs!  To end this activity, we shared what we could do in our classroom that would kind.  

The last book that we read this week, was Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.  Each time Victoria, Rita, and Jo (characters in the book) were not being kind to Chrysanthemum, another character in the story, a child would come up to a large heart and wrinkle it.  Any time Victoria, Rita, and Jo were kind to Chrysanthemum, a child would come up to the large heart and smooth out the wrinkles.  In the end, we noticed the heart still had wrinkles even though the girls were kind at times to Chrysanthemum.  The important lesson we learned is that we need to think about what we are going to say to someone, especially when our feelings are hurt by that person, before we actually say it as we could wrinkle their heart.  And it's hard to make a wrinkled heart smooth!  This was a great hands-on activity that the children really enjoyed.

The children also drew pictures of ways they could be kind.

Number Corner

Number Corner is our interactive calendar component to our Bridges math program.  Each day the children predict what will be on that days calendar marker, which is often a pattern of some sort.  This month's pattern is dealing with shapes, which includes shapes in our world.  For example, on Friday the calendar marker had a clock on it, which is in a shape of a circle.  The children also keep track of how many days we've been in school using ten-frames, links, and a number line.  This is an excellent way to show multiple representations of numbers!  We also have an interactive number line, which we use for counting forwards, backwards, and even predicting what numbers are missing in a sequence of numbers.  When we use this particular number line, we have a special helper come and help us: Hap the Happy Hopper (a grasshopper).  See if your child can sing the song that Hap shared with us this week or even ask them who Hap is.

Math

This week we began our math program.  Our lessons focused on noticing attributes of shoes and sorting shoes into similar groups (laces and no laces or sneakers and not sneakers).  The children were excellent detectives when having to notice similarities and differences between the shoes!

The children also started working in math stations.  Math stations are implemented into the program that allows the children to independently work on math concepts.  In the beginning of the school year, we always start with exploring different math manipulatives including Unifix cubes, polydrons,  pattern blocks, and geoboards.  These manipulatives will be used throughout the school year in a variety of activities.

Theme

This week we began learning about the life cycle of a monarch butterfly.  We have read several books on the life cycle, have drawn out the life cycle and even acted it out.  At this time, we don't have any actual monarch caterpillars to observe in our classroom.  However, we do have a black swallowtail caterpillar that we are very curious about and can't wait to see what happens when it changes into a butterfly.

Before we began our study of butterflies, we had a discussion of what we thought a scientist was and what tools they use.  We read the book What is a Scientist?  and then the children drew themselves as a scientist in their science notebooks.  

Lastly, Patti Tursi, our ELL teacher, came into our classroom to teach us a greeting that had us saying hi in 5 different languages.  Ask your child to share one of the ways to say hi in a different language.