Scientists at Work

We started off the week with two questions: "What is a scientist?" "What does a scientist do?" Many students did not know or presented classic responses, "makes potions," "does experiments," "wears glasses," etc.

We have been learning each day how we are scientists. For example: We started using hand lenses to observe the school gardens. We drew realistic illustrations and labeled them. Then we learned that scientists use tools, write, and draw realistic illustrations!

Ask your child how s/he was a scientist today!

Learning about Feelings and Thoughts

We have been learning a lot about our feelings and thoughts. We have two new glitter bottles in our classroom. They show how our thoughts when we're upset or angry go crazy (like the glitter)! We learned that when our thoughts are everywhere because we're feeling mad or sad, we need to take the time to breathe and let them settle.

Want to make a glitter bottle/jar? Fill up a bottle or jar with water and glitter. Add a little dish soap to help make sure the glitter goes to the bottom. Add corn syrup to slow the glitter down. Need more specifics? Check out this awesome website that gives recipes!

We've also been talking about the kinds of thoughts we have. We learned that sometimes we have "cloudy thoughts." These are the thoughts that make us feel sad, angry, or defeated. We also have "sunny thoughts." These are the thoughts that make us feel happy and confident. We talked about how sometimes the cloudy thoughts are taking over our brains, but that the sunny thoughts are still there - they are always there! We have to decide how much of our cloudy thoughts we want to think about and use our power to make the sunny thoughts shine through.

What's your child's sunny and cloudy thoughts?

Math Games!

This week we launched our Math Workshop! We have been working through three stations every day: Math with the Teacher, Math Writing, and Math with Someone. Ask your mathematician for details about these stations!

Here are some math activities from this week:

Math Writing: We practiced writing our names, dates, and numbers. We practiced working on our own and  raising our hands to ask questions. We also practiced reading and following directions.

Compare: Deal the deck of cards between two players. Each player turns a card over. Whoever has the larger number wins those cards!

Double Compare: Deal the deck of cards between two players. Each player turns over two cards. Players add the two cards they flipped over. Whoever has the larger sum wins all four cards.

 Five in a Row: Players take turns rolling two dice. They add the numbers and then cover the sum with a counter. The goal is for players to get five in a row - together!

The More the Merrier

More materials...more fun! We're continuing to explore our room, learn about materials, and take care of them! (Click the photos to make them larger.)

We explored with clipboards and materials from the math shelf!

We learned about the scrap paper bin! We can add to it and take from it to create incredible artwork!

We used highlighters to highlight sight words in our Poem of the Week. We learned that they are similar to markers, but also different.

We have been using stencils to fuel our creativity!

 We opened whiteboards and markers! We're drawing and designing a lot of interesting scenes, words, and even treasure maps.

Ask your child about his/her favorite material this week!