Plants and Sedar

 

Hello family and friends,

We have had an eventful week in the Aalva class! Monday our intern Mr. Rodgerick helped us find giant leafs for a science project. He led the class in an experiment about how plants get water and nutrients. In order to show the class how plants soak up water he gave everyone a big leaf, a cup of water, and red food coloring. Most plants “drink” water from the ground through their roots. The water travels up the stem of the plant into the leaves and flowers where it makes food. When a leaf is cut from the branch it still “drinks” up the water. Coloring the water with food coloring does not harm the plant in any way, but it allows us to see the movement of water through the stem and the veins of the leaves. On day one of our experiment we documented everything we saw by either drawing a picture or writing words, just like real scientists! We have continued to monitor and document our findings and cannot wait to see what happens after the leaves have been drinking water for one week.

Last week we planted basil inside of eggs shells. We learned that the egg shell gives the soil lots of nutrients when it decomposes. When we came in on Monday we noticed that a lot of our plants had started to sprout. Since the plant cannot stay in the egg shell forever and we want it to eventually decompose we decided to move the entire egg and plant into a pot. We spent Tuesday decorating our pots with acrylic paint so it would last a long time. Then Wednesday after the paint had dried we moved our basil into the pot, added lots of soil, and water the plant. I hope you enjoy eating the basil we grew. I know the kids are SOO excited to taste it; they have been talking about it for two weeks!!!

This week we have had a great time with Morah Devorah learning about Pesach. We have read the Pesach story and learned about the Seder Meal and the four questions children should ask at the Seder. Everyone has made a Seder plate and Matzah cover to take home for Pesach next week. One thing we have done with Morah Devorah this week is play with Pesach toys. Morah Devorah brought in a HUGE bucket of pretend Seder Plates, matzah, pretend food and so much more. The kid’s favorite thing to play was hiding the Afikoman (a half-piece of matzah which is broken in two and set aside to be eaten as a dessert after the meal). On Friday instead of having our normal Shabbat party we had a mock Seder. Morah Devorah decorated a room in the school to look exactly like a real Seder meal. We got to sing songs, say our blessings, drink grape juice, eat Matzah, and egg, and parsley and so much more! I know everyone loved the meal and I know they will be excited to tell you all about it!

 

Love,

Ms. Michelle

 

 

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.

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
• Stands up for rights most of the time.
• Responds respectfully to positive and negative feedback from adults most of the time.
• Use classroom materials responsibly, most of the time.

Language & Literacy:

• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.

Mathematics:

• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Classify objects in their environment by color, shapes, size or function.
• Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.

   

 Decorating pots and planting our basil...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoying our Sedar with friends!...

 

 

 

 

Learning more about plants with Rodgerick...

 

We love playing in centers!...

It's Time To Plant!

Hello family and friends!

We've been having a great week in the Aalva class! Our chicks are still doing well and have grown so much since they've hatched. We have homes for all 9 of them and some of them are leaving our classroom this weekend. With so many chicks and such a small space, we felt that it was time to let some of them go ahead and get comfortable in their forever homes. We will be keeping a few of them until Spring break so that we can continue to observe them and watch them grow. As we've studied chickens, we've read that they enjoy eating seeds. This lead us to talking about flowers and spring and bugs. This will be our new exploration (as we continue to monitor our chicks, of course).

To start our week we read the book "Planting a Rainbow" by Lois Elhert. This book got us thinking about the different types of plants and what they provide for us. We discussed the difference between seeds and bulbs and their importance. We also talked about the importance of labeling our plants so we could remember what we're growing as well as remember the best way to care for each plant, since they all require different types of care. As we talked about different types of plants we discussed what plants have, what plants need, and what plants give to us. We then decided to do some planting. We learned that egg shells are great fertilizer for soil and since we have plenty of them we thought we'd give it a try. This was a great connection for us between chickens and plants! We started by cracking the top off an egg and cleaning it out. We then filled their egg shells with soil and placed some basil seeds inside of them. Finally, we watered them and placed them in the window to receive plenty of sunlight. Once our seeds begin to sprout inside the shell, we will transfer the whole thing into a pot and cover it with soil. We are predicting that the egg shell will help the basil to grow big as it provides the soil with loads of minerals and vitamins. Once we make the transfer, we will send the pots home and you'll have some basil to cook with!

In talking about the process of seeds to plants, we thought it'd be fun to watch the roots and stems leave the seed. In order to do this, each child made a bag to grow a seed in. We wet some paper towels and placed 3 beans inside each bag. We then hung them up in the windows for sunlight. Through doing this, we hope to be able to see the roots and stems sprout from our seeds. The kids have been checking their bags for changes daily. Once these beans grow further, we'll send them home for the kids to plant in a pot of their own. As we bagged these seeds we talked about the importance of rain and water for our seeds. We've noticed that our wet paper towels have kept our bags moist so that our seeds are staying watered on their own. We also talked about the importance of sunlight as we discussed where to hang them in our classroom. Like true scientist, we made predictions of what will happen to the seed in the bag. Here are some predictions we made:
- the seed will die
- the seed will grow
- nothing will happen to the seed (it will stay the same)
- the seed will double (it will make another bean)
- leaves will grow out of the bean
- the bean will grow roots
- the bean will grow more beans.

We also planted some lavender in our classroom this week! We each added soil and seeds to a large pot and placed it in the window. We're hoping to get some beautiful lavender before the school year ends! As we planted we discussed the importance of soil and the nutrients that it provides for the plant. We also talked about the seasons and the changes we see in plants throughout these different seasons. Miss Madison (our intern) did a lesson for us based around the seasons. She read us a book explaining the different seasons and their importance. She then conducted a writers workshop with the kids where they wrote and illustrated their favorite season and what they enjoyed about it. This was Miss Madison's last week with us. We hate to see her go but we look forward to her coming back to visit us! We said a farewell to her by giving her a book that we made. Each child drew a picture and said something about her. We also bought her a Pete the Cat book...one of our favorites...and each child signed it for her. The kids gave plenty of hugs and snuggles!

While discussing seeds we have also talked about the importance of seeds to other forms of wildlife. Since it's spring, we thought it'd be fun to get some birds eating our seeds. From working with our chicks, we've learned how much birds enjoy seed and are looking for some now that winter is over. Each child made their own bird feeder. We were actually able to find a recipe that did not require peanut butter (yay!). The kids mixed up all their ingredients and then pressed the mixture into cookie cutters to dry. They poked a hole in each one so we could string them. I hope you can find a place to hang them at home and hopefully see some bird action as well!

We also had some special guests come to our room this week. Three women from Carolina Gardens (an assisted living home) came by and read stories with us. It just happened that all 3 of them are retired teachers. They sat in groups with the kids and read books and talked with them. This was such a sweet time for both them and the kids! We are hoping to make this an event that can be done monthly.

It's been a great week of learning and planting! We're looking forward to exploring all the growth (seeds and chicks) that will happen in our classroom over the next few weeks!

Love,
Ms. Rachael


Approaches to Learning:

• Demonstrate growing ability to predict possible outcomes based on prior experiences and knowledge.
• Reason about events, relationships, or problems.
• Represent prior events and personal experiences in one or more ways.
• Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
• Demonstrate an increasing ability to organize actions and materials in the learning environment.

Social & Emotional:

• Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following directions.
• Participate in group life of the class.
• Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
• Demonstrate with adult guidance simple techniques to solve social problems.

Language & Literacy:

• Carry out simple directions and directives.
• Complete a thought or idea when communicating with others.
• Classify objects and information by observable attributes into predetermined categories.
• Ask "how" and "why" questions about things in books and their environment.
• 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.
• Combine some letters with pretend writing.

Mathematics:

• Organize and represent data with real objects.
• Understand and use positional words to describe the location of objects.
• Sort and classify objects by one attribute.
• Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
• Show one-on-one correspondence through ten when counting real objects.
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.

Sprouting basil in egg shells...

 

 

Preparing bags for our beans...

 

 

Our plants need rich soil and plenty of water!...

Carefully planting our lavender. We discovered that these seeds are extremely tiny...

Making our seed feeders for the birds. We hope they enjoy them!...

 

 

Reading with our visitors...

 

 

 

Our Chicks Are Here!

Hello family and friends!

Our chickens hatched!!! We have had such an exciting week in the Aalva class. When we came into the classroom on Monday we had 3 little eggs with cracks in them. Needless to say we spent the entire day watching those little guys hatch out of their eggs. Our first chicken hatched at 9:05 Monday morning and we named him Matzah ball. Every time someone came into our classroom the kids would get so excited about telling them that our chick hatched! As they watched the chick flop around and learn to walk they made many observations and were very concerned for the baby chick. Some of the comments were “They have a little toother that they use to peck peck peck”; “It’s alive”; “It’s trying to stand up!”; “It’s wiggling it’s wiggling!”

We also had some good questions: “How do we get them out?”; “Is the chick okay?”; “How do you know if it’s a girl?”; “What if they get stuck?”; and “What will we do with the chicks after two weeks?” I loved seeing their compassion for the little baby chicks. They would go up to the incubator constantly just to make sure the chicks were doing okay. The love that everyone has shown for the baby chicks is truly amazing!

After our first chicken hatched we made predictions about how many more eggs would hatch. We had guesses from only one more to all thirteen! At the end of the day Monday we had 5 baby chickens and we weren’t expecting any more. Tuesday morning we went about our day checking on eggs in the incubator but not really seeing any movement and then all of the sudden one popped out! We were so shocked. By the end of Tuesday we had four more baby chicks, making it a total of nine. Rachael and I were so excited and shocked and I know the kids were too. I even had to go out and buy a bigger brooder on my lunch break because the one we had gotten wouldn’t fit nine little chicks after we took them out of the incubator. When Rachael and I started this process of hatching chickens we were told that there was only a 20% hatch rate. That meant that only 2 or 3 chicks would hatch out of our 13 eggs. I still cannot believe that we had a 70% hatch rate!!!

After all of our chicks were put in the brooder we decided to name them. Here is a list of the breed and name of the each chicken:

Dominque – hatched at 9:05am – named: Lucy

Easter Egger – hatched at 3:27pm – named: Daisy

Olive Egger – hatched at 4:36pm – named:  Olive

Salmon Favorelle – hatched over night – named: Marigold

Easter Egger – hatched over night – named : Cody

Easter Egger – hatched Tuesday 10:00am – named: Opal

Salman Favorelle – hatched 12:55pm – named: Sammy

Dominique – hatched 2:12pm – named: Matzah Ball

Easter Egger – hatched 4:20pm – named: Peep 

 

This week we wrapped up our study on chicks. We will continue to keep our babies in the classroom until about two or three weeks but we are moving on to a new exploration next Monday. To wrap up our study we decided to do a survey. Since we know so much about chickens we decided to use that knowledge and go around the school asking others if they knew the same information that we did.  Some of our questions were: “Can eggs chirp?”; “Can chicks fly?”; and “Can eggs be blue?” We split up into small groups and went around the school searching for people that knew the correct information. When we came back we talked about how many tally marks were in each of our columns, yes and no. We were very surprised to see that not everyone experts like us!

 This week was also Rabbi Meir’s birthday. We spent most of the day Thursday creating a birthday book for him. We asked everybody to draw a picture for our book and tell us one thing they liked about Rabbi Meir. Everyone was so excited to give him the book and we literally screamed with excitement when we told him Happy Birthday on Friday. I know he loved the book and all the hard work they put into drawing the pictures and writing the things down that they loved about Rabbi Meir.  

Love,

Ms. Michelle

 

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.
• Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questioning and adding ideas.

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
• Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.

Language & Literacy:

• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
• Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.

Mathematics:

• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Show one-on-one correspondence through ten when counting real objects.

  

 Our eggs hatching!

 

 

 

Harry's mom came to read to us! Thank you, Michelle, for our beautiful book!

Working on our birthday surprise for Rabbi Meir...

We love our chicks so much! We wish we could hold them all day long...