Helping Our Garden Grow!
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We had an action packed week before break! We dressed up like our favorite book characters for our Book-o-Rama, celebrated our expert listening with another marble jar celebration, and spent some time looking at the sprouted seeds we planted for our QAE garden! We also started studying wood, but I will catch you up on that learning when we get back from break. I hope you all have a relaxing, fun and safe week away with your families. Enjoy!
Helping Our Garden Grow!
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What an exciting week last week was! We finished publishing our All About teaching books and then created electronic copies of the books using Book Creator. On Friday, we celebrated our teaching books by having others read them and learn from them. First, we shared them with family members able to join us for the first part of our day, then we shared them with our 3rd grade reading buddies. We continued to share them with each other all day by publishing our electronic books on our SeeSaw accounts and watching them together in class. This was the first time that the K teaching team has taught this project. In the past, we had done our research project collaboratively at the end of the year with a more teacher-directed topic selection process. As teachers, we have been so impressed with how well our kids did with this more self-directed research process! We also loved the natural differentiation it provided for our young writers. They learned how to turn a wonder into new learning, a skill that they will use for the rest of their lives! We will be moving away from this project as we dive into our new Science unit this week (Investigating Wood!) but we will return to the research process we learned after Spring Break by having "We Wonder Wednesdays"! Stay tuned for more opportunities to learn from our learning!
Looking Ahead...In May, we will be doing our 3rd PBL project ~ How Can We Use Our Creativity To Help? Many older students at QAE are given time and space to be compassionate creators, working to make the world a better place via a “Genius Hour” program. We developed this project to provide a developmentally appropriate way for our kindergartners to have the time, space, and materials to be compassionate creators. For the past two years, we have done this project as in individual project in the winter. This year, we are excited to integrate our collaboration lessons into this project and do it in the spring. We are excited for you all to be a part of this journey with us, and always want to encourage you to give us feedback and help us to think creatively! Field Trip!People all over the world use their minds in creative ways to solve the problems they see around them. We will start this project by looking at examples of people across the globe who have come up with creative solutions for problems in their lives and communities. On April 27th, we will visit the Gates Foundation's exhibit All Lives Have Equal Value from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm. Permission slips will be sent home on Monday. Please send your student with a lunch from home that day as we will be eating in our classrooms before taking the public bus down the hill. If your student is already 6, please send him or her with $2.50 for bus fare. The exhibit is free, and all chaperones are welcome. If you want to join us, please indicate that on your student's permission slip, bring bus fare and be in our classroom at 10:45 am on the 27th.
Sharing!
Becoming Avid Readers!Thank You Kate and John!!!Phoebe's parents did an amazing job on our class' auction art project. We had a chance to enjoy it last week before sending it off to the Auction on Friday, where it was admired by all. I am so grateful to Kate and John for their creativity and their generosity! We are keeping our fingers crossed that we will be able to give Room 203 families an opportunity to purchase a copy of the book in the near future. We will keep you posted.
What Does 100 Look Like?We had a great week before break, celebrating Valentines' Day together and then wrapping up the week by stretching our counting collection muscles all the way to 100 (and even beyond!). I have posted photos below for your enjoyment. Have a great Mid-Winter break! Counting Collections of up to (and over) 100 Counting, one to one correspondence, and place value are important skills students need to learn in kindergarten. Students get practice with these skills while counting collections of things. Differentiation occurs as some kids count smaller collections and others are ready to move on to larger collections. I tell the students they have two jobs during counting collection time. They need to tell me how many objects are in their collection, and then they need to show me how they know, using paper and pencil (and soon videos) to convince me of the number they have. Last week, we did this activity twice. The first time, all of the kids were able to work with a partner and count their collections accurately, but not all of them were able to successfully show their work. We took some time to share a few successful papers, and then made a list of the ways (strategies) we could organize our counting to show our thinking. The second day we tried, every group was able to record what strategy they used on paper and then use their write up to explain it to the class. |
Valentine's Celebration ~ Feb. 14th. We will spend time in class exchanging valentines. If your student chooses to bring valentines for the class, please make sure they have one for everybody. I also ask that no food/candy be attached to the valentine. A sticker, pencil, ect. attached to the valentine is okay. Thanks for your understanding. A student name list is included below. Our class party will be at 12:45 on the 14th. Please plan to join us for the fun. Family members welcome!
| Mid-Winter Break ~ Feb. 20th -24th 100th Day of K ~ Friday, March 3rd Students will be asked to bring in a counting collection of 100 things as a part of our celebration. QAE Auction ~ Friday, March 10th Want to know more about what's happening in PE? Check out Ms. Veleber's PE website! |
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