Body Moves

The children had fun working on a variety of body movements in Gym this week.  With lively music in the background, they spent several minutes at each of seven stations practicing hopping, jumping, body rolls, crawling and running.  They had a great workout!

Lots of chocolate...

Estimados Padres (Dear Parents),

You should have received a couple of flyers in the Friday Folders about an event that's taking place this coming Friday, Nov. 22nd. More detail is in the flyers we sent but I also wanted to encourage you through this blog to take your children, if possible, to this cultural event related to Spanish classes. I think they will enjoy it very much. We have also managed to get you, the parents, a 50% discount on adult tickets as long as you show the flyer with my name one it. Feel free to email me if you have any questions: ebermudez@abingtonfriends.net

El Escondite

We are continuing our subject of los números with the game El Escondite (hide-and-seek) as a way to reinforce counting numbers from 10 until 20. As a request from students and teacher, this week we will sing and dance to "Conga, Conga". I will also teach them a new game as a way to relax and transition into our next subject: colores (colors).

What's new in Math?

So much Math, so little time to write about it!  I am just getting my energy back after my bout with pneumonia and want to let you know what we've been working on since our exploration of shapes (which continues on of course!).  We are always working to make number sense very concrete for the students.  That is, what numbers are and what they represent or what they mean.  Each day during our Morning Meeting there are several of our jobs that relate to these concepts directly.  The children take turns adding numbers to our calendar and our hundreds chart, we keep track of the weather with a graph, each day we add a penny to our coin jar and monitor that with a set of ten frames.  These provide visual and tactile experiences of the numbers, as well as number recognition.  We are beginning to count by tens and fives, as well as by ones as our numbers grow.  We use our various charts to notice what more than and less than mean and always invite the students to explain their thinking - there are so many ways to figure things out!!

We have extended these ideas by creating individual graphs and class graphs such as our apple tasting graph and our pumpkin seed predictions chart.  Some fun games that we have played include Dice Racing and Shut the Box.  I am going to send copies of these home, along with a set of dice so that your children can teach you how to play!  Any games that use dice or dominoes or have the children moving spaces, all support their understanding of numbers and increasing and decreasing value.  We would love for you to play lots of games at home!  We also took the time to count how many seeds we found in each of our pumpkins by using ten frames.  We discovered that the smaller pumpkin had slightly more seeds than our larger pumpkin, 385 to 370!!

We introduced seriation - putting things in order by size - with several activities and have noticed the students modeling this with their lunches and sometimes in their play.  We are hearing the connected vocabulary as well; big, bigger, biggest, small, medium and large, etc.

Recently, we have begun working on patterns which has been a tricky concept to grasp and explain. We work on extending patterns, creating patterns and recognizing them.  Today, two children identified different patterns in our Morning Meeting, one in our calendar and another in our hundreds chart.  But, we were tricked by our ten frames, which everyone agreed had a pattern but in fact does not.  I don't think they were convinced that there isn't a pattern there!  It would be fun to help them explore patterns at home or anywhere that you might notice them.  They really are everywhere!

Hoops with Mr. C

Gym class was quite a challenge this week when Mr. C brought out the hula hoops.  In the first activity, the children were challenged to roll their hoops and while they were rolling to step through them.  They were very determined and a few actually made it through without knocking the hoops down.  Then, they had to swing them around on their waists.  There was a good deal of laughter as everyone was wiggling and swaying trying to keep their hoops spinning.  And finally, the most difficult activity was trying to roll the hoop away such that it would return to the child, like a boomerang.  The students put great energy and effort into each of these hoop exercises.  It was lots of fun to watch but very difficult to photograph!!

Seed Party 1 and 2

I have to reemphasize how wonderful the Seed Party (1) was in Science!  The students had been waiting with great anticipation and asking regularly, "Is today the Seed Party?" We were overjoyed with all of the seed/bean options and the opportunity for trying new things that Rosanne provided for us.  She explained what seeds/beans were in each dish and what seasonings.  It was great to see many children trying new foods, seeds in fact, and really liking them.  Many thanks to Rosanne for such an amazing spread and helping us appreciate another important facet of seeds - we can eat them!!

Seed Party 2 is an experiment that Abby is guiding the children through.  She had the children help her fill a small pumpkin with soil and predict what they thought would happen.  One student asked if they could plant some of the seeds in a pot, which they did.  A graph was prepared to show predictions for which would spout first.  But, to our amazement, they both started sprouting in just a few days!  So, each student predicted which they thought would produce the most sprouts and explained their reasoning to the class, then placed their name on the graph.  Everyday we cannot believe how tall the sprouts are growing and how many more are sprouting!!  We would like to get a planter and see if we can keep them growing inside.  Some students remarked that they can't wait to see a pumpkin flower.  It would be phenomenal if we could make that happen!  Take a look at them the next time you are in the room!!

       Wow!!  Look what happened over the weekend!!

         What will they do next??!!