Week 6: September 28th

WOW! We had an action packed week, and an even more exciting week approaches. On Monday I told the story Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, we worked on adding and subtracting numbers up to 20, we got to observe our beans growing up our obstacle course, and best of all, the second graders gave the most delightful production of St. George and the Dragon. You would have been very pleased with your child. Our class was incredibly respectful during the performance and gave the second graders a standing ovation at the end of the play. On Friday, the same second graders came in to help teach us how to finger knit. All the students were asking, "were you St. George? Were you Una?" It was as if they were star struck.

Next week is going to be full of field trip fun! Rockaway Garden Center has offered a school partnership which includes a 20% discount for the school as well as getting tours of the nursery. We're going to walk to the Garden Center on Wednesday and learn all about native plants and soil.

Thursday will begin our first trip to the beach. Several Seaside friends have volunteered to teach the children how to surf. We are so excited to make our first beach trip of the year, and think it will be a perfect time to infuse many different concepts.

One thing to work on at home this week will be counting by different numbers, for example, count by 2's, 5's and 10's.

Jordan was so captivated by the story of St. George and the Dragon, she created this scary fire breathing dragon during her free draw!

As a confidence and team building activity I had everyone share a compliment with a classmate. It was really sweet to see how we built a web of confidence and love. 

Hello Seaside friends and families. I was so happy to be back in the classroom this week, and was greeted with many many hugs. I feel like we didn't miss a beat. Keep you eyes peeled this week as the Harvest Moon wanes. It has just been beautiful.

A special shout out to Emilia and Ella for making it to the International Beach Clean Up. It was such a success I think we are going to start meeting for beach cleanups on a fairly regular basis. As we move into October we will begin learning more about sea creatures and the ocean. I have posted a couple great sites if you are interested in adopting a manatee or a Loggerhead Sea Turtle nest please follow the links below. I adopted a Loggerhead nest for the school, and pretty soon we are going to have a representative from BSTP come in and talk with the students about sea turtles.

I think it would be nice if we could adopt a class manatee as well. I believe the fee is $25.00, and this is something that the students will try and get donations for.

http://www.savethemanatee.org/adoptpag.htm

http://www.bstp.net/

Some things to work on at home:

• READ READ READ: This group of students just love reading! Please make sure that you are reading with your child and your child is reading to you as much as possible. 
• We just learned how to make yarn balls this week, and this is an excellent way for the students to develop their fine motor skills. If you have any spare yarn at home let your child organize it! 
• We are really cruising with addition and subtraction. The class made flash cards this week for addition problems, and we are getting pretty fast with subtraction as well. If you are waiting in line somewhere or traveling in the car, throw some equations at them. For example, "What's 5 + 7? What's 10 - 7?" 
• Throwing and catching is always a good thing to work on at home. Try and create a game where if you hit a certain object it's 3 points and if you hit something else it's minus 1 point. The kids love doing the math and it's a great way to reinforce eye hand coordination. 

Here are some pictures from our yellow and blue painting. I love how everyone in the class got all the same materials, and all the paintings turned out so unique.

Several parents have written with concerns about what food they should bring to school. Here is a fantastic site- if you've hit a meal plan block.

Great Meal PLans

This is a really interesting discussion on what color is. I think it's an important article for parents to listen to because too often we impart our sense of color and the world onto the child's sense of color. It's essential to remember that the child is experiencing color for the first time, and sees things through a very different narrative.

Radio Lab article on COLOR

Week 3: September 2

I am so impressed with everything our class is remembering and all the fantastic observations we are making. Though short, this week was action packed. We watched the pole beans sprout in the garden and in our personal cups, we heard the Tale of The Golden Goose, learned about the "Th" sound, worked on our eye hand coordination in gym, began to solve more complex addition equations, learned about the different parts of the body in Spanish, and we even studied ants.

Classmates constructing supports for our sprouting beans. The support system morphed into a lizard and ant theme park quickly. 

Week 2:

Our second week was even better than the first. Our class is getting used to the daily rhythm, and what the classroom expectations are. This week was action packed: we got to paint for the first time, we got our beans in the garden bed, we practiced writing math equations, we had our first yoga class, and some of our personal beans are beginning to sprout. Ashby's bean seems to be growing the fastest. It was the first to root!

A special thanks to Lili's parents for bringing in some lettuce, carrots, potato, and a magnifying glass.

We've had a bit of confusion as to what a fire ant is these past two weeks, so Mrs. Glass' class and I will be doing a week long unit on studying and learning about ants this coming week.

Please tell your children to keep up with all the fantastic learning and observations.