Dino World

Hello family and friends!

We have had such a busy yet fun week. We've had a lot of really cool things happening at our school. We did our second day of recording for the training video and we were also the site for a tour done by educators from all over the state. It was a privilege to be able to participate in both of these events. The kids were happy to show off their room and favorite activities. We also celebrated Tu B'Shevat (The New Year of the Trees) with Morah Devorah! We spent time learning about these trees and sampling different foods that grow on them.

We started our week by continuing our exploration of Africa and lions. We did some research through our Zimbabwe newspapers that we started on last week. We have left these newspapers in the Art center for the kids to use throughout the year. As with all of our explorations, we want it to continue throughout the year. We love to go back and make references to things we've learned in the past. We also finished up our nonfiction books. We had some students focus solely on lions, some on Africa, and some chose to do a combination of both. As we worked we talked about the process of writing. The kids used both writing and illustrations to write their stories. They finalized them with both a front and back cover. I hope you are amazed, just as we are, as you watch their development in writing. Each one of them has come such a long way since August! You can find all of these books in the hallway. Make sure you read a few since we all wrote about different facts.

Since we felt like we exhausted their interest of lions and Africa, we have moved on to a new exploration...dinosaurs! We started this exploration off as we always do, with a KWL chart. The kids knew a lot about dinosaurs but they also came up with some pretty awesome questions. Some questions were about specific types of dinosaurs but the majority covered the species as a whole. Throughout our study we will end up touching on both the individual types as well as the species in general. I'm excited to see what we discover!

One question we had was about fossils. Using books, we were able to find out a lot of new facts about fossils. We learned that fossils were formed over a very long period of time. Throughout that length of time, the dinosaur bones actually turned into stone, which is what we know as a fossil. We also learned that fossils come in different forms. Some insects have been preserved in hard pieces of sap for thousands of years! We also learned that some fossils are actually called imprints. This is when an animal or plant leaves it's imprint in mud, which is eventually filled with sand, and finally turns hard. We decided to make our own imprints. We have a box full of realistic miniature size dinosaur skeletons. There was a wide variety of dinosaurs so we let each child pick which dinosaur interested them the most. We then made our own salt dough and pressed the skeleton into the dough, in order to make a dinosaur imprint. We then cooked the dough until it became hard (like the imprint fossils found today). Each fossil is labeled with the dinosaur name on the back.

After our fossil imprints were dry, we decided to do some research on our dinosaurs. We sat down one on one with the kids and talked about their fossil. After figuring out the name of our fossils, we looked through books to learn more about them. We let the kids search through the books to find pictures of their specific dinosaur. Once they found a page that interested them, we  read through the pages together. Our goal after reading was to have an understanding of a few interesting facts about their dinosaur. After we felt that we finished our book exploration with each child, we let them draw a picture of their dinosaur based on what they learned. The kids talked with us through their drawings, giving details about the different body parts of their dinosaur and their uses. They labeled their drawing with the dinosaur name and we asked them to share some facts they learned about their dinosaur. These are still a work in progress but when we finish we will put them in the hallway with their fossil imprints. This will allow you can see both the dinosaur and it's skeletal imprint!

We can't wait to learn more about dinosaurs in the weeks to come! I hope everyone has a fun and safe weekend!

Love,
Mrs. Rachael


Approaches to Learning:

• Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
• Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
• Show curiosity in an increasing variety of activities, tasks, and learning centers.
• Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questioning and adding ideas.
• Demonstrate growing initiative in selecting and carrying out activities.

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
• Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
• Follow classroom rules and procedures with reminders.
• Demonstrate with adult guidance simple techniques to solve social problems.

Language & Literacy:

• Classify objects and information by observable attributes into predetermined categories.
• Begin to use classroom resources such as books, charts, photographs and graphs to gain information about topics of interest.
• Represent familiar people and experiences through art and language.
• Combine some letters with pretend writing.
• Begin to understand the relationship between oral language and written language.
• Creates a picture and labels it orally.
• Understand relationship between print and pictures on a page.

Mathematics:

• Use nonstandard units of measure to compare everyday objects.
• Compare the lengths of two objects.
• Show one-to-one correspondence through ten when counting real objects.
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.
• Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical idea.

Researching Africa through newspapers...

 

 

Making dinosaur imprints...

 

 

Researching our dinosaurs and drawing them...

 

 

Celebrating Tu B'Shevat with Morah Devorah...

 

 

 We love our pattern blocks!

 

We are musicians...

 

 

 

Africa Experts

Even though this week was a short week, we still had an exciting and busy week in the Aalva class! To start off our week we had a videographer come in and actually film our class for a new ECERS 3 teacher training video. The videographer set up in our classroom and filmed our regular day. It was really exciting to watch the kids interact with him and ask him questions about his work. We all learned a lot about the process of filming from him being with us. The video did not interrupt our normal routine which was GREAT and we had a lot of fun smiling and posing for the video :)

We have still been going full speed with our exploration of Africa. I am thinking we will be wrapping up our study at the beginning of next week. This week we were given newspapers from a teacher that visited Africa over the summer. We actually got to look at newspapers from Zimbabwe!! We spent some time one morning looking at the newspapers and reading headlines. Each child was given a section of the paper to browse through and I have to say they LOVED it! They were so excited to show us what they were learning while reading the paper. After each child had time to look through their section of the paper we met in a large group and talked about what we learned. Later during center time we let students cut out parts of the paper they really like and glue it on a poster board.

We have become experts on lions and Africa over the past few weeks. As experts, we decided that we should share the information we have learned with others. We talked about the fact that scientist’s research and when they make discoveries they share that knowledge with others. That's why we know so much about the world...someone discovered it and they shared it with us! To share our facts we thought it'd be best to write a book. We started by talking through non-fiction books with each child. We discussed the different parts of a book and their function. We discussed the difference between fiction and non-fiction and why each was important. Each of our books consisted of 4 pages worth of facts. We became the author and illustrator of our individual book. 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.

The process for writing our books has taken this entire week and will continue into the first part of next week. We truly believe that the PROCESS is what is important! Writing a book on the preschool level may seem like a simple process, but it is actually very complex. Children engage in all the same kinds of thinking that proficient writers engage in as they write. The process of making a book requires a writer to create something in their mind and then use writing and/or drawings to capture their ideas. First we talked with the kids individually and let them tell us facts about that they have learned while studying lions and Africa. Then we spent time with each child writing their book. We talked about what the pages should look like, what information should be added in our book, and how to organize everything. I am so impressed with how they have been coming along. The attention to detail is amazing. They really got excited about being experts and they took it seriously. They carefully wrote their words and made sure to draw pictures that matched their facts. They spent a lot of time working on their books. And that's ok! We were glad they got so involved. We'll be hanging them up in the hallway as we complete them so make sure to give them a look.

Love, Ms. Michelle

Approaches to Learning:

• Demonstrate growing ability to predict possible outcomes based on prior experiences and knowledge.
• Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
• Represent prior events and personal experiences in one or more ways.
• Try to solve problems encountered in play.
• Demonstrate an increasing ability to follow through with tasks and activities.

Social & Emotional:

• Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following direction.
• Participate in group life of class.
• Demonstrate strategies to join play group with adult support.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
• Manage transitions positively when told what to expect.

Language & Literacy:

• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Retell one or town events from a story read aloud.
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
• Explore books independently.
• Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
• Begin to understand the relationship between oral language and written language.
• use drawings, letters, or words to create narratives about people and things in their environment.

Mathematics:

• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Classify objects in their environment by color, shape, size, or function.
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.
• Sort and classify objects by one attribute

We are authors and illustrators!

 

 

 We found ice and went exploring!

Our Journey to Africa

Hello family and friends!

It's been great to finally get back in the swing of things this week. I have a lot to catch you up on (I'll try not to write a novel)! As you know, we started out voting on a new exploration and came to the conclusion that we wanted to learn about lions. We spent the beginning of last week doing tons of research. We started our KWL chart and began researching through books and online. We realized quickly that we knew a lot more than we thought about lions. We ended up knowing more facts than we had questions. As we read, one of the main facts we kept reading was that lions are found in Africa. This got us talking about Africa and somewhere along the way our whole momentum shifted. We left the curiosity of lions and devoted our time to Africa. I think it's great for the kids to see that we aren't stuck to a "topic". We are here to explore and discover our interests. We can learn what we want, when we want to learn it.

The first thing we did to explore Africa was finding it on a map. The distance between two places on a map is difficult for anyone to grasp but the main lesson we wanted the kids to learn was that the world is round (we compared the difference in a flat map and globe), that we lived very far from Africa (we would have to fly about 18 hours or ride a boat across the Atlantic Ocean), and that Africa was on a different continent. We discussed that a continent is made up of many different countries. After discussing these things in a large group, we put stickers on our globes and let the kids explore them independently. We asked a lot of questions about continents, countries, and oceans.

We thought a great place to start in our exploration was talking to an expert. Mrs. UD, one of our infant teachers, is from Nigeria so we asked her to come in and speak to us. We learned so much from her! We wrote a welcome message to her on our board and welcomed her with plenty of hugs. She talked to us about traditional foods, music, celebrations, dress, and weather in Africa. She reminded us that people in Africa live the same as we do. They live in cities with homes and families. We spent a lot of time discussing similarities and differences. We learned that Africa only have two seasons: dry and wet. During these times there is either a lot of sun or a lot of rain. We also learned that some countries in Africa have large jungles where many different animals live (including lions). Sadly, we also learned that as more cities grow, more trees and jungles are taken away, and this can harm the wildlife there. She was patient with us as we asked many questions and even brought in pictures for us to see. Thank you, Mrs. UD for sharing your beautiful culture with us!!

Our meeting with Mrs. UD lead us through our exploration the rest of the week. We spent one day focusing only on traditional African music (which we learned has a heavy emphasis on drums). We listened quietly to music then we spent some time dancing to it. We also spent time playing an African djembe along with the music we heard. We left the djembe out for the kids to explore independently. It was an awesome day! We talked about what this drum was made of and how it was used. We learned that if we hit different parts of the drum, it made different sounds. We made a lot of noise and had a lot of fun doing it!

We also spent some time this week talking about resource that we get from Africa. We learned that Africa produces a large amount of salt and cocoa beans. We let the kids explore these recources in any way they chose using tweezers, mirrors, magnifying glasses, our hands, our noses, and our tongues! Some used the tweezers to chop the cocoa beans up and others broke them with their hands. We learned that cocoa beans are really good for us and high in antioxidants. We also learned that cocoa beans can be ground up into a powder and used to make chocolate! We tasted both the salt and the beans. We also discussed the feel and smell and uses of these materials in our every day lives.

We've already learned a lot about Africa and I'm excited to see where our exploration takes us next week. The kids still seem interested and are asking more questions, so we'll continue this exploration until they feel it's time to move on.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Love,
Mrs. Rachael


Approaches To Learning:

• Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
• Show curiosity in an increasing variety of activities, tasks, and learning centers.
• Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questioning and adding ideas.
• Demonstrate delight or satisfaction when completing a task, solving a problem, or making a discovery.

Social & Emotional:

• Follow classroom rules and procedures with reminders. 
• Use classroom materials responsibly, most of the time.
• Manage transitions positively when told what to expect.
• Develop strategies to express strong emotion with adult help.

Language & Literacy:

• Respond to elements of colorful language in stories and poetry.
• Retell one or two events from a story read aloud.
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
• Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
• Begin asking "how and why" questions when looking at texts.
• Make connections to prior knowledge, other texts, and the world in response to texts read aloud.
• Contribute to small group or whole group class dictation activities. 

Mathematics:

• Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning. 
• Investigate solutions to simple problems. 
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment. 
• Represent simple joining and separating situations through 4.
• Organize and represent data with real objects.

Mrs. UD speaking to us about Africa...

 

 

Enjoying our time with the djembe...

 

Exploring salt and cocoa beans...

 



 

We are engineers...

We are artist!