This week kindness and love were in the air as were conversations of friendships, marriage, and collaboration. The children accomplished the task of writing Valentine’s cards to classmates and teachers, being careful to add details about what friends like and card colors that they would prefer. They demonstrated many organizational skills as well, such as crossing off the names of children once a card was finished, returning finished cards to their Valentine baggie, and choosing and returning all those colored pencils! Watching the children “deliver” the cards on Wednesday morning was outstanding! They were completely independent while searching out each classmates Valentine bag, and dropping in a message of friendship.

Field Trip Preparation

 

We will have lunch, recess, bathroom break in the shelter of the barn before we have direct instruction about the maple sugaring harvest and production. We have enough parent volunteers and teachers in Lower Elementary for very small groups of 1 adult for each 2 children. Thank you to our wonderful parents!

We are asking children to bring 2 to 3 branches into school after the February vacation. The branches that we are looking for are 2-3 feet tall, have a bark or shape interesting to your child.

Field Trip Math

We used the field trip opportunity to do some real-life math. If all of your 12 classmates wear boots, how many boots will we have all together? If we all hear two birds each, how many bird songs will we hear all together? We used classroom materials to calculate these challenging problems… the most being how much money will we need to go on the field trip for 12 children, if the cost is $18 each? Children went directly to the classroom “bank” to get 12 groups of 1 ten stick and 8 ones. Then they began the process of combining the tens, and trading the ones. They have learned so much about place value this year.

We started the math lesson with a guided meditation by Ms. Vanessa, who played bird-song while talking about a walk in the woods. Each child was given a feather to focus their attention on the birds that they might see, and the experience they will have. It was a beautiful way to center ourselves before math groups!

Literacy Explosion!

Maybe it has been the practice of storytelling each day, or the reading or engaging picture story books. Maybe it was the reading each day every afternoon after lunch and recess. Maybe it was the introduction of the Ed Emberly books that help deconstruct the complicated job of drawing images. But a fire has been lit! The children in Lower Elementary at Acera have been writing, drawing, and reading with a passion and enthusiasm that is palpable. Children are sharing ideas, adding multiple details, and are telling stories across multiple days.

Please make sure that correction at home by parents or siblings is at a minimum to continue this momentum over the break. Fluency is accomplished by the speed by which children expressively communicate ideas on the page. Editing and perfection will come AFTER ideas and images are flowing. If you are able to carve out a drawing/writing area at home, that would aid in our efforts. If you could tell “true” stories from your childhood or day, that would be amazing! Thank you for helping out at home!

Field Trip Pictures

 

 

This week was marked by the celebration of the 100th day of school! The children brought in 100 drops of water in a bottle, 100 balloons, 100 marbles, 100 foam cuisonnaire rods, and the hundreds came trickling in all week! I can’t begin to count how many times we counted to 100, but I do know that we counted backward by 100 once during our morning meeting this morning. Whew!

During Choice Time we attempted to make 100 homes from colorful paper, connect 100 cardboard triangles to a platform with tape, and paint 100 train cards. All of these tasks involved teamwork, persistence, and hand-eye coordination which we have been emphasising in the new year. I have been seeing an increase in endurance and focus in all areas of the curriculum, as well as classmates supporting each other.

Writing Workshop

The children have continued to be extremely motivated to write using the comic strip format to tell stories. This very graphic technique is ideal for encouraging the habit of including small details in drawings as the children aren’t overwhelmed by trying to fill an entire piece of paper. It also allows the kindergarteners and First Graders to tell an entire story in pictures, before going back to write words.

Everyone in the class was shown the same picture from the Chapter book that we just finished reading, My Father’s Dragon. The task was to write about the picture, and to include a detailed picture of the baby dragon. It was a lovely writing sample to capture the progress the children have made thus far this year.

Math Groups

Besides grouping by 10’s to count to 100 and participating in all kinds of 100 day activities, we have also been working with the concept of measurement. We used Unifix cubes to measure the height of our Amaryllis plant, and it is already 39 cubes tall. Then Ms. Courtney asked us to collect measurements from the Commons and we spent the day using manipulatives to discover the length and width of the grey tables. In addition to lining up the materials and counting, the children used the skills of estimation, and we had a conversation about fractions.

Birthday Books

On Tuesday the 6th Tavi’s Mom, Miriam, came in and read us the story Pandora. This beautifully illustarted Picture Story book has powerful messages, references the Mythological tale of the same name, and addresses deep feelings. Thank you Miriam and Tavi for the wonderful read-aloud and for gifting the book to our classroom. We will use the treehouse drawing in the story as part of out tiny home inspiration.

If you are interested in donating a book to the Lower Elementary classroom as part of a birthday celebration, that would be delightful! Here are some tiles that go along with our study of homes.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Ms. Jen

 

 

Friendship Train

On the way through the Commons on the way to woodworking, the children formed a line by saying, “Hop on-board the friendship train!” Looking ahead and behind, the Lower Elementary children made sure that everyone was gently holding shoulders forming a train. The students are clearly bonded at this time of year, and have a strong identity as collaborative peers. There were several children out this week with fever, colds, and stomach-aches! Stay healthy this weekend, and we will make sure that we wash hands, and clean the tabletops and materials each day.

Writing Workshop: Experts

This week we asked the class what they feel they are experts at… things that they are good at or know a lot about. The lists were wonderful, and are a good tool to use when thinking about what to write about during our literacy block. If you are an expert at “being a friend” then writing a story about friends might be a good idea! Today, children began to write comic strips and one table discussed writing several and having a comic book sale! “What should we call our company?” the entrepreneurs asked!

Math: Place Value

At math time it is clear that the group has a facility with numbers and interested in large quantities. We have been playing many games and participating in exercises that make place value visible. By using 1,000 cubes, 100 squares, 10 sticks, and 1 units, children can conceptualize big numbers. By manipulating them, they are developing the fine motor skills to write and represent those big numbers. As the example above shows… we are still working on this concept!

Theme & Choice

We noticed that the Amaryllis plant has doubled in size over the last week, measuring 24 Unfix cubes! We took this opportunity to create observational drawings and paintings of the classroom plant before it blooms. The 6-step process involved looking, sketching a draft, drawing on high-quality paper, tracing over the pencil line with a Sharpie, painting the drawing, and when that dried, adding the background.

My Father’s Dragon

We finished reading My Father’s Dragon out loud this week as a class, and in the last chapter the wild alligators form a line across the river to form a bridge. The class spontaneously lined up head to toe to simulate the alligators, and I pretended to cross the “bridge”. They thought this was very silly, and everyone ended up with the giggles. We will start the next book in the series by Ruth Stiles Gannett called Elmer and the Dragon.