News for October 5

News for October 5

This was a short but busy school week! The children were busy writing letters to parents for Curriculum Night, going on our first class field trip and cooking for our Thanksgiving feast.

The class started off the week by performing their sock puppet plays for the class. The groups had to create the puppets, the credits for the movie and the props. What a great variety of stories! The students gave each group positive comments and advice on how the plays could be better next time. (For example, performers need to speak loud enough for the audience to hear). These plays were also filmed and the videos can be seen in a separate posting.

In writing, the students learned how to write a letter. Then they each used this standard form to write a letter to their parents, put it into an envelope to leave on each of their desks as a “surprise” for their mothers and fathers on Curriculum Night.

In math, the children discovered all the ways to “make 10” by doing a shake and spill activity using two-sided counters. They also began to learn the double facts (for example, 6+6=12) and how to use the double facts to help them solve other addition facts. For example, 6+7 is really 6+6+1. This type of fact is considered a “doubles plus one” fact.

Later in the week, as an extension of our read-aloud book “Six Dinner Sid” the students worked with a partner to figure out and explain how many dinners Sid the cat ate in one week. This helps the children listen to and work with another child to figure out a math problem.

During our guided reading time this week (and next) each child will be reading with me as his/her reading level is assessed using the standardized reading test, DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment).

In social studies, the students learned about the North Pole, South Pole, equator, northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere and where these are located on a globe.

The class finished learning all the American Sign Language (ASL) signs for the 26 letters of the alphabet. The children also learned the signs for the numbers 1 to 10.

On Wednesday we had a wonderful trip to the North District Library to attend a workshop with the Canadian artist Ashley Barron. She told us about how she makes her art and showed us her books. Then the students had a chance to make collage art like Ashley. By cutting and glueing paper, the students created a variety of animals to be part of a large “pond”. Thank you so much to parents  Sreelatha, Iswarya, Hina and Sung Kim for joining us on the trip and helping to supervise the children.

The students learned about the life of a real library cat named, Dewey Readmore Books. We also watched a video. Here is the link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0jGpvvLmwbs

On Thursday, the class took part in a fun Room 204 Thanksgiving activity, our annual Thanksgiving feast! As an extension activity to our read aloud book, “Stone Soup”, the children hosted a community building activity by working together to cook vegetable soup and make homemade butter. Each child brought in a vegetable and chopped his/her vegetable to put in the soup pot. There were lots of different kinds of vegetables this year from tomatoes to carrots and corn. We added water and cooked the vegetables and then added some small pasta. While doing this, the students wrote about Thanksgiving in their writing journals and some children created Thanksgiving cards and pictures for their families. The children also each had a chance to shake a jar containing whipping cream to make butter. It was fun to see how the white, liquid cream separated into a yellow blob of butter and thin, white liquid (whey). After all, cooking is really SCIENCE! The class then sat together at their desks while they ate their soup and pieces of bread spread with homemade butter. It was a wonderful time, as the children shared the food that they made together. (If you would like to make our recipes for soup and butter, please see the more detailed information in a separate posting.)

Books read aloud this week:

Six Dinner Sid by Inga Moore

Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth

What!? Cried Granny - An Almost Bedtime Story by Kate Lum

Dewey - There's a Cat in the Library by Vicki Myron