Aalva Class 2015-2016: We Love Dinosaurs!

Hello family and friends!

What a fun week we've had in the Aalva class! We've been focusing on two main things: exploring more about dinosaurs and working on our Shabbot boxes. We feel like our dinosaur exploration is coming to a close as we have ran out of questions this week. If the kids decide they're still interested next week, we will definitely keep rolling with it. As for our Shabbot boxes, this is something we've been working on along with Morah Devorah. The kids spent time with her making challah bread, candle holders, and challah covers. It's everything they'll need for Shabbot! There is also a piece of paper inside explaining the items and the prayers that go along with them.

To start off our week, we began paleontologist! We've been learning about different types of scientists and their jobs when dealing with dinosaurs and fossils. We decided to pull the sand table into the middle of the room and search for our own fossils. We used the same dinosaur skeletons that we worked with last week since we already knew their names and some facts about them. We covered them with sand and provided the kids with sand sifters and brushes. They spent the whole morning digging through sand and brushing off their discoveries. I've heard from several of you that this activity was talked about a lot at home. We were so happy to hear that they enjoyed it and were extending their learning outside of school too!

One question asked at the beginning of our study was, what do dinosaurs eat? We found information about this from our books (thank you to everyone who brought in dino books for us to read!). We divided dinosaurs into 2 categories: carnivores and herbivores. We spent some time going through our books and talking about each dinosaur specifically. We focused mainly on what they ate, where the probably lived, and their size. We also pulled out some magazines and cut out different pictures of meats and plants. After cutting, we divided them into categories and then glued them to posters of the different types of dinosaurs. We learned that even though the T-Rex was the biggest meat eater, the herbivore dinosaurs were actually the biggest in size! Most of them dwarfed the T-Rex and other meat eaters. We also learned that many of these dinosaurs were extremely smart and used a lot of skill when hunting for food. We learned that most of the plant eaters had to be larger in size so that they could eat leaves from the tops of trees. The kids even turned some lunches into discussions of whether they were having a carnivore or herbivore lunch day!

Another big question the kids had was, why did the dinosaurs become extinct? We spent some time talking about the word "extinct" and "theory" and what they mean. We concluded from our readings that there are several theories as to why the dinosaurs became extinct. These included asteroids, the Ice Age, volcanoes, and a flood. Ice Age was one of the main theories we read about. We talked about the idea of the Earth becoming very cold and icing over. We discussed how this would effect all types of life, even our plants, trees, and bugs. We also talked about the way these changes would affect the dinosaurs. We put some dinosaurs in ice and froze them overnight. We then let the kids use tools of their choice to excavate the dinosaurs from the ice. It was basically a wet cold mess, but they loved it! We even saw some great team work. Some kids realized that certain tools worked better than others for chopping up the ice. When they were done, they were quick to share their strategy with others who were still working. Once we got our dinosaurs out of the ice, we figured out which type they were and discussed their size and food preferences. I apologize that I didn't get many pictures of this activity. It was a little messy and crazy! I wish I had though, it was the talk of the week!

We've had a really fun time exploring dinosaurs and we've learned a lot! I hope everyone has a wonderful long weekend!

Love,
Mrs. Rachael

Approaches to Learning:

Reason about events, relationships, and events.
Demonstrate growing ability to predict possible outcomes based on prior experiences and knowledge.
Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
Try to solve problems encountered in play.

Social & Emotional:

Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following directions.
Participate in group life of class.
Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
Develop friendship with one or two preferred children.
Express fears and concerns to familiar adult.

Language & Literacy:

.Complete a thought or idea when communicating with others.
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.
Contribute to small group or whole class stories, rhymes or poems.
Begin to understand the relationship between oral language and written language.
Contribute to small group or whole class dictation activities.

Mathematics:

Sort and classify objects by one attribute.
Identify the positions firth through tenth using concrete objects.
Represent simple joining and separating situations through 4.
Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
Investigate solutions to simple problems.

Making delicious challah bread...