News for November 17

News for November 17

This short week the children solved tangram puzzles, learned about the human brain and made sock puppet characters for their movies and of course, much more!

In math, the children reviewed their 2D or two-dimensional geometry by learning about the Chinese puzzles called "tangrams". There are 7 pieces or "tans" to each puzzle set. The challenge is to solve how the tans are put together to make various pictures. At this level, the shape of each tan is given, but in a true tangram puzzle, only the outline is given. The students practiced solving the puzzles and at the beginning it took about a minute to solve the puzzles but as they practiced and shared strategies, most students were taking less than 30 seconds to solve a puzzle and some took less than 15 seconds! The children then designed their own tangram puzzles for their friends to solve. (These student-made puzzles will become part of a class book.) The students continued on to 3D or three-dimensional geometry by creating 3D figure "skeletons" with toothpicks (edges) and small pieces of plasticine (vertices). The students also created paper 3D figures by cutting and folding paper patterns called "nets" to create different kinds of prisms and pyramids.

The students worked to solve 2 math challenges this week, one identifying and counting right angles and one identifying and counting attributes of 3D figures.

The class was divided into groups of three to work together to make a movie. There are a lot of decisions to make and tasks to do when making a movie. This week, they planned the movie stories (characters, setting, problem, solution) and created sock puppets that will be the "stars" of their movies.

The students worked very hard to get their work ready for display for all the parents to see during parent/teacher interviews. The "How-to" pillows books were finished, as well as, the artwork using living things (stamps using potatoes and thumbs). The class learned how to create a border from their potato stamp images to surround the art they made using their thumbprints and fine, black art markers. The children then wrote art reflections to show their analyses of their artistic process. For example, "What was the hardest part about making your art? Why?"

The children started an author study this week by reading books by the author/illustrator Susan Meddaugh. She creates stories about "Martha" who is a talking dog. (Ask your child how Martha is able to speak English...the answer is quite interesting!) Several of her books were read aloud this week and we will continue this project next week.

In social studies, the class reviewed the basic directions of north, south, east and west. Then the directions in-between (northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest) and the convention of placing these direction names on a "compass rose". They practiced identifying directions on a map.

The students have been interested in what exactly a "brain" is. This topic came up in discussion because we were talking about how plants know where the sun is (phototropism) but plants don't have brains. Animals do have brains and human brains are the most complicated ones! We started by identifying three main areas of the brain that are easy to understand for primary-grade children: the pre-frontal cortex (decisions), the amygdala (fight/flight) and the hippocampus (memories).

Books read aloud this week

You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey

Martha Speaks by Susan Meddaugh

Martha Calling by Susan Meddaugh

Martha Blah Blah by Susan Meddaugh