We are thankful!

It's been a great week in the Aalva class! With Thanksgiving approaching, we've been spending some time talking about the holiday and what it means to us. We started the week by asking the kids what they thought "thanksgiving" meant. Most of their answers were about food and playing. It opened the door for some great conversations about time spent with family and friends.

One of the main things we wanted to focus on through our study was the idea of being thankful. We discussed the definition of being "thankful" and agreed that it meant "to be glad you have something in your life". Our favorite book we read about being thankful was “Give Thanks for Each Day” by Steve Metzger. After reading and talking we decided that we tend to be thankful for the things we love and the things that mean the most to us. In order to discuss more about the things we were thankful for we decided to make a classroom thankful tree. First we went outside into the woods to find some branches. We knew that we wanted them to fit inside of a vase so as we walked around we discussed the size and shape of different branches. Once we got back into the classroom we began making our very own leaves to place on our tree. We had the students make leaves using stencils. After tracing whatever shape they chose, they cut them out, wrote a word to describe what they were thankful for, punched a hole in the paper and hung it up on the tree. We told the kids that they could add to our tree whenever they wanted to. Anytime they thought of another reason to be thankful, they could make a new leaf and hang it up. The kids have really been excited about this activity and have made everything by themselves! Their tree is sitting outside our classroom door. We also encourage you and your family to write down some things that you are thankful for. We want to open up the tree to the whole school and see how full we can get our tree!

We also had the opportunity of having a college student work in our classroom over the past two weeks. He spent some time making observations and playing with the kids, which they thoroughly enjoyed. For his course, he had to spend several hours with us and do a lesson for his final semester in school. He decided to do a science experiment with us...making a snow flake. Of course snow is an exciting event for those of us in South Carolina who rarely see it. He spoke with the kids about the seasons and changes that we see in each one. They spoke with him about transitioning from fall to winter. After some discussion, he demonstrated the science experiment and then had each child come do it themselves. To make a snowflake, they each made a unique shape with a pipe cleaner and hung it from a string. Next they placed their shape in a bucket containing warm water and Borax and let it sit for 24 hours. The next morning everyone was really excited to see what happened to their pipe cleaners. Unfortunately, the experiment did not work out. We spent some time talking to everyone about how not all experiments work out the way you want them to. I think we learned a lot from this outcome and I know the kids were still excited about the experiment even though it was a flop. Everyone talked about how it was just like being a real scientist and not knowing if it would work. Then they hypothesized about why it didn’t work and maybe some things we could do next time to make it work better.

With Chanukah approaching fast we have started talking about it during Torah time with Morah Devorah each morning. This week we read the book “If the Candles Could Speak, The Story of Chanukah” by Dassie Prus. We will be learning more about the significance of the holiday throughout the next several weeks. Each day Morah Devorah will come in and talk to us about different things we do during Chanukah. We have already been practicing with our dreidels and later on we will be making latkes, donuts, menorahs and so much more! Along with learning about Chanukah we will also be practicing for our Chanukah play which will be December 11^th. I can’t wait!!

Love,

Ms. Michelle  

 

Approaches to Learning:

• Represent prior events and personal experiences in one or more ways.
• Demonstrate an increasing ability to follow through with tasks and activities.
• Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps. 

Social & Emotional:

• Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
• Show awareness and respond to feelings of others with adult guidance and support.
• Stand up for rights much of the time.

Language & Literacy:

• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Respond to elements of colorful language in stories and poetry. 
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud. 
• Begin to distinguish between real and make-believe in stories read aloud. 

Mathematics:

• Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
• Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.

 

 

 

 

   

Today I Feel Silly!

Hello family and friends!

What a crazy week we have had! I felt like this week flew by as we were constantly hopping from one thing to the next. We had several activities this week that were outside of our normal routine so it was hard for us to sit down and refocus on a new exploration. I decided to take this time and focus on something we all experience...emotions. As you know from living with a 4 year old, they experience a lot of emotions in a day (as we all do). The beauty of a young child's emotions is that they hide nothing. As we experience different emotions in the classroom, we've been trying to talk through them. We've been trying to get each child to think about what caused their emotion, what support they need while they're feeling this way, and the appropriate way to deal with that emotion.

To start this week, we made a huge list of emotions. It was surprisingly long! Many of these emotions they listed were ones that I didn't expect them to have heard before. As we listed these emotions, we talked about them. We discussed situations that cause these different emotions and how we want to react when experiencing them. I also categorized these emotions into two groups: emotions that make us feel good and emotions that make us feel not so good. Throughout our conversation we learned that each of us has felt all these emotions at some point in our life and none of these emotions are "bad". They may not feel good at times but it's not bad for us to feel angry or grumpy...it's just part of how we deal with different situations. After a long (and surprisely in depth) conversation, we read a book about emotions. Their favorite book about emotions this week was "Today I Feel Silly: and other emotions that make my day" by Jamie Lee Curtis. Here is the list the kids came up with: sad, silly, crazy, happy, angry, frustrated, mad, sleepy, scared, quiet, excited, grumpy, joyful, confused, lonely, cranky.

In discussing how different emotions make us feel, we encouraged the kids to express these emotions through artwork. To get them started we talked about what different emotions look like by using colors. When I called out an emotion each child gave a color that they associated with that emotion. While some of the color results were different, the majority of them were the same...for example, most associated red with anger and blue with sad. From colors we moved to drawings. We spent journal time spread out around the room (we love to color on the floor) with our crayons drawing a picture of an emotion. The kids could pick any emotion they wanted and express it in any form they chose. We explained that these journal entries could reflect any emotion they've felt before in any way they felt best expressed that emotion. We turned some low volume classical music on and let them go to work. I was amazed. They put genuine time and effort behind their artwork. After everyone was done, we met back together to have a share time. We've seen them thinking about their emotions through their paintings as well. You'll notice several paintings around the room labeled with a simple emotion instead of sentences.

Speaking of artwork, we were able to work with a wonderful artist this week to make paintings for our annual Posh Nosh auction. The kids worked with him to make a class painting as well as contributing to a painting that was done by each student in the school. They didn't want this activitiy to end. I'm pretty sure they all felt like super kids using a fancy brush and painting on a huge piece of canvas with an artist. We're so proud of our class full of artist! Of course the painting it going to amazing...I can't wait to see it in January! As a reminder, our conferences will start on Monday. Feel free to sign up outside our classroom if you'd like to meet with us. I hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

Love,
Ms. Rachael

Approaches to Learning:

• Represent prior events and personal experiences in one or more ways.
• Demonstrate an increasing ability to follow through with tasks and activities.
• Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps. 
• Show ability to focus attention for increasing variety of chosen tasks and activities for short periods of time (10-20 minutes).
• Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.

Social & Emotional:

• Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
• Show awareness and respond to feelings of others with adult guidance and support.
• Stand up for rights much of the time.
• Describe characteristics of self and others. 
• Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following direction.

Language & Literacy:

• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Respond to elements of colorful language in stories and poetry. 
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud. 
• Begin to distinguish between real and make-believe in stories read aloud. 
• Relate information from texts to personal experience. 
• Make connections to prior knowledge, other texts, and the world in response to texts read aloud.

Mathematics:

• Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
• Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in their environment.
• Represent simple joining and separating situations through 4.
• Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as". 

 

We are artists...

 

 

We are writers...

 

 

We are mathematicians...

 



 

Wrapping Up Giraffes

Hello family and friends.

This week we have wrapped up our study on giraffes. We really enjoyed this exploration and I was so surprised at how much everyone learned! We started the week with reading workshop. One thing we learned during our workshop that the kids were interested in was how giraffe’s drink water. We discovered that when a giraffe finds a waterhole, it has to spread its front legs out or bend its legs to drink the water. I think we were all impressed by how the giraffe moves its body just to get a drink of water.

While reading many of our nonfiction books we learned that newborn giraffes are six feet tall! The kids were so impressed by that number that we decided to get out our measuring tape and see exactly how tall six feet was. We discussed that everyone, including Ms. Rachael and me, were shorter than a newborn giraffe!!  Since there was no one in our room that was above six feet tall we decided to ask the entire school. We made a survey and taped it and the measuring tape up outside of our class. It says “Are you taller or shorter than a baby giraffe?” When you pick up your kids please mark your answer and we will check back Monday to see the results of our survey!!

Last week we got an invitation from the kindergarten Jewish studies class. They invited us to come play and eat snacks! Thursday was the “BIG” day that everyone was waiting for. We had a blast playing with the kindergarteners! They were great hosts and hostesses. We got to see what their classroom was like, look at all of the Jewish toys and games they had to play with, and we even got to eat delicious cookies made by the class. Next week we hope to write them a thank you for their generosity and for hosting us!

To wrap up our study on giraffes we decided to make our very own nonfiction book!! Since we have become experts on the subject of giraffes we decided that we should share that information with everyone. We discussed the different parts of the book and their function and also discussed the difference between fiction and nonfiction. In small groups we talked about all the different things we have learned about these friendly giants. We were careful to fill the pages with correct information. If we couldn’t remember something we learned, we dove back into our books and searched for answers. Then using our nonfiction library books as a guide we wrote down our very own facts and drew pictures to go along with the facts. We laminated the book and put it outside for everyone to see. I am so impressed with our very first book and hope you enjoy reading it!

Love,

Ms. Michelle


Approaches to Learning:

• Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
• Show curiosity in an increasing variety of actives, tasks, and learning centers.
• Show increasing ability to maintain interest in self-selected activities and play despite distractions and interruptions.
• Understand that a task can be accomplished through several steps

Social & Emotional:

• Use classroom materials responsibility, most of the time.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
• Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.

Language & Literacy:

• Distinguish between descriptions of story events and spoken words of characters.
• Retell one or two events from a story read aloud.
• Incorporate favorite parts of literacy texts into play activities.
• Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
• Display curiosity and interest in learning new words.

Mathematics:

• Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.
• Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
• Associate at least two measurement devices with their purposes.

We've learned so much about giraffes...

 

Hanging out with the kindergarteners for Jewish studies...