Hanukkah and Thanksgiving

With the unusual timing that occurred this year, we also celebrated Hanukkah at the same time. The pictures show children working on a picture of a menorah. A parent, Emily Bloch came in to share Hanukkah with the children. She shared a favorite book about Hanukkah, as well as some Hanukkah treats.

In November we created a story that we acted out with all the food from a Thanksgiving feast. It was based on a very familiar childhood tale, I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and in this case was about an old lady who swallowed a pie.

Language Arts

We've been doing lots of writing in our School Helper books. We interview people in the school about their job and then write something we learned about them. We have begun Writer's Workshop with the children and they are working in their writer's folder several times a week.

We continue to practice learning sounds in Jolly Phonics. We also play games sounding out words. We continue to work in predictable stories at a beginning level, and the kids are doing great!

We are writing a class book about things we are grateful for. We read a Native American Thanksgiving Address about appreciation for all the things on Earth that support the people. We are also reading
I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie and will act the story out with a paper version of the story elements that the children colored.

The only photo we have is of the children learning some Jolly Phonics games on the Smart Board.

Math

We have been working with comparing towers of different lengths and placing them in order from smallest to largest. We then proceeded to do this with the children's names, comparing the length of three or four names and recording them in our math books.

We also played a very popular game of "What's Missing?" The child removes an object from a tray and ask her/his partner to figure out what it was.

We have recently moved to a unit on patterns. The children began by making towers and sorting them into patterns and not patterns. We then discussed the difference between the two types of towers. Today they articulated that the pattern is the one that does the same thing over and over again. They figured that out really quickly. Now we will spend weeks refining this idea and testing it out in all its permutations.

Recent Happenings

Technology is slow at school today. I hope this can be posted.

The children made BZ some tissue paper flowers for the farewell to BZ assembly.

Lauren made pear sauce with the children. A big thank you to April Woodard-McNiff for the donation of home grown, organic fruit!

And of course the Halloween Parade was awesome. Thank you to the parents who helped us get the kids into their costumes.

And More Pictures

In Addition

Here are the Hopes and Dreams that children wrote, that they would like to learn in kindergarten. We use what they want to accomplish to talk about how we want to act in our classroom to meet our goals. Children had lots of ideas for what was acceptable behavior and what was not. Based on these ideas we generated a list of classroom rules.

We finished our sunflowers and put them up around the classroom. There's also a picture of children listening to stories on headphones. This is a popular activity every day and there's always a sign up sheet with children eager for their next turn. Children also get a turn on the iPad during rest time every six days or so.

Physical Education

We are sad to hear that Mr. Scalzo is taking a leave of absence. We will miss him. Here are a few shots of children learning how to play soccer.