Sep 11 2012
We had our first family night of the year tonight. It was game themed! Thank you to all of the families who were able to make it and join in on the fun! We will be having another game night after fall break so there will be another chance to join the fun. Here are a few pictures from tonight’s game night.
Bingo!
Math Games
More Math Games!
Duck, Duck, Goose 🙂
Sep 11 2012
We had a busy day today. We continued our conversation about dinosaur bones and how they can help us understand dinosaurs. We learned that by looking at the teeth of dinosaurs, paleontologists can tell whether the dinosaur was a carnivore (meat eater) or herbivore (plant eater). Today we also talked about how bones give us clues to ancestry and connections to other animals that remain today. Many friends have commented on the similarities to various sea creatures, lizards, and chickens. Our friends have many theories about what happened to the dinosaurs and who their descendants are.
This week we have also been talking about subtraction. We have been highlighting various friends’ strategies for solving these problems during share time and have created strategy posters. These posters can then support friends during independent problem solving time the following day by using a strategy that was successful for another child. The kids also get quite excited when their strategy goes up as a poster!
Sep 10 2012
This week, we began talking about bones! This morning, friends were invited to create watercolor pictures that illustrated the insides of dinosaur’s bodies. We also had a discussion about theories on why bones are important to people and dinosaurs. Friends were invited to look at some chicken bones and a raccoon skull on the light table. We also created representations of dinosaurs with pipe cleaners, and added the different bones we knew about to our model. We hope to discover more about bones and their functions this week!
Sep 07 2012
We had so much fun today during word study. We did something a little bit different- a game day! Friends were challenged to play games with friends that dealt with beginning sounds (p, t, s, m, b) and beginning blends (th, ch, sh). They had to work to determine what their card began with and advance their piece to that letter. Mr. Henderson and I noticed SO many friends were assisting one another when someone needed support. Afterwards, we discussed what worked during our game day and friends commented how nice it had been to have a friend help them when they were in need- such good teamwork. About word study today, Kalaya said, “This is SO MUCH FUN! I love this place!” We’re glad she does!
Sep 07 2012
Friends work togther to build half meter long cube sticks.
I have some awesome learning to share from Wednesday. Wednesday morning, our class resumed our conversation on how to figure out how big our T-Rex was in real life. Several friends showed us how they had figured out how to mark a half meter by creating sticks of unifix cubes that were 50 cm long. We knew it was important to have this measurement, but we weren’t sure what to do next. We decided to take a closer look at our picture we were working from with the scale. We re-read that 1cm = .5 meters. Lucas asked, “Well how many centimeters is the picture?” Beatrice and Ayden knew, “21!” Then Lucas suggested, “Let’s make 21 sticks and lay them out. That’s how big!” Friends agreed that this would be the best way to represent our T- Rex. They demonstrated teamwork as the entire class enthusiastically began building sticks of equal lengths. Friends problem solved on how to check to make sure the sticks were equal. Some chose to re-measure them with a ruler, some compared them to others, some insisted on counting them each time and made sure they each had the same amount. When we finally had 21, we had a decesion to make. “What now?”
Teamwork!
Addie looks down the row, its getting longer!
Going off of Lucas’ suggestion, friends began taking turns connecting each of the pieces to create one, long line. The kids were paitient as we fixed breaks and troubleshooted directional problems. The cubes began to extend beyond our carpet area, past our word wall, and beyond. Miles enthusiastically predicted, “Its going to go out of the room! Its so big!” And Miles was right, our T-Rex ended up being SO big that it extended out of the classroom. WOW! After admiring our work in the morning, we decided to switch out the breakable cubes for something a little more permanent- tape. We laid down tape in place of the cubes to mark how long the T-Rex was and had fun decorating it with T-Rex-es and dinosaur words. Make sure you come check it out next time you are at school!
Longer!
BreAnna adds a half meter to the dinosaur.
Right out the door!
