On Tuesday the gang was a little low-energy when gathered for morning meeting. Reading the crowd, I asked if anyone felt like a song. I made a request for favorite songs, and a sea of hands shot up! Skidamarink a Dink a Dink, Skidamarink a Doo was the first suggestion from the crowd, and we went around sharing collective favorites for 15 minutes. With this sophisticated group of children, it is sometimes hard to remember that they are little kids who need to sing silly songs, wiggle and jiggle, and enjoy a good round of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes!

Nouns: Common, Proper, Abstract, Compound and Plural!

This week during Writer’s Workshop, we have taken many opportunities to discuss nouns of all kinds. One day I pulled 3 nouns out of the “Parts of Speech” box, “grandma, nurse, pilot”, and created a fictional story of my grandmother who studied to be a pilot for many years and became the first female intercontinental airline captain. One day she became sick on a flight and called for a trained nurse…. this is a great game to play in the car, at dinner, at bedtime or during a bath! The children know that it takes practice to create and tell stories, and fun to make up silly ones!

Because the Lower Elementary children have become more fluent writers, generating ideas and telling stories, we have started editing their work for spelling, capitalization, and for parts of speech. At home it would be most helpful to make time and space for DRAWING and writing without comments, judgement, and corrections. The more that the children read, and integrate concepts of print, they will become more confident and prolific.

If you could continue to read aloud to your children each night that would be very helpful! They are sponges for language and vocabulary, and many children are reading words in the classroom at Quiet Book Time that they don’t know the meaning of. While we read aloud in the morning and afternoon, we stop at discuss vocabulary and meaning. Many parents stop reading to their children as soon as they are reading for themselves (guilty!) but here is an interesting article about the benefits of reading aloud to older children as well. Why Reading Aloud to Older Children is Valuable

Fractions

Ms. Vanassa’s and I have continued our investigation of fractions with the students by labeling, cutting, and organizing fraction circles up to 12ths. The children have begun to notice equivalents 1/4 and 1/4 is the same as 1/2, and 1/8 and 1/8th is equal to 1/4. After telling word problems about fractions, doing some hands-on investigation today, Vanessa brought the whole group over to the unit blocks and led a demonstration of equivalents. We are going onto adding and subtracting fractions! Please take the opportunities to talk about fractions in real-life… cooking, sharing food equally (crackers, pizza, cookies), and really dividing anything into equal parts!

Happy Weekend,

Ms. Jen

We were very pleased that the weather cooperated with us this week, as we did not want to miss Choice Time on Thursday. The children finished the bases where their tiny tree houses will start emerging in the weeks to come. By chance Mr. Anthony introduced weaving this week, and the Lower Elementary students thought that they could use the finished tapestries in the little homes.

The students were shown images of many different fairy tree houses which used ladders, rope swings, and handmade furniture. The structures used moss, pebbles, sea glass, birch bark, and leaves. They were multi-story and elaborate, set outside and inside. The images were shown to spark individual ideas before we begin construction in earnest. Measurement, storytelling, writing, spelling, and the physics of simple machines are easily incorporated into this theme!!

Math

 

Ms. Vanessa and I have begun a fraction unit with our students by introducing the idea that fractions are about sharing one thing equally, or sharing many things equally between friends. The children have really connected with the sharing and the fairness aspect and already noticing equivalence “1/4 and 1/4 make a 1/2” and “58/10 and 1/5 makes one whole”.  We are making colorful designs with each of the red metal fraction stencils 1 whole to 1/10, so that the children can have the time to work concretely with the material before we start adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

 

This week we had a number of prospective students join our class for the morning to learn about Acera’s Lower Elementary program. The class was warm and welcoming, interested in taking our visitors under their wings for snack and recess. The way in which they warmly greet guests in the classroom has been impressive. One student said, “I remember when I came to visit last year I was nervous too. It’s ok.”

Thematic Study

Staring mid-year, it was hard to get a sense from the children about aspects of “Tiny Houses” that they were passionate about. Did they love building and constructing? YES! Did they know a lot about different houses around the world? Absolutely! Were they aware of aspects of what makes a house a home? Most certainly. With a theme so vast with multiple ways to focus, combined with encompassing science, technology, culture, art and math… where to turn next?

The interest in scale has come up often over the last several weeks. Who is the tallest in the class, how big is the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, and how can our teacher be so old and so short? Comments such as, “Next year I will be taller than you, Ms. Jen.” come-up often. With this in mind and in collaboration conversations with Ms. Estee, we wondered, “What if the children made Mini-Me’s to establish scale for their structures?”

We began by measuring each child in the class, and marking their height on the classroom wall. Then, with many materials assembled, each student made a figurine 1/12 of their size. They used wire for the frame for flexibility, a large wooden bead for the head, and variously shaped and sized wooden beads for the rest of the shape. After the figurine was completed, the children were charged with adding details such as hair, face, clothes. “But my Mini-Me doesn’t stand!” a child noticed… a design flaw that was fixed by attaching flat wooden ovals to the legs with a glue gun.

In woodworking with Mr. Josh, we started to work on our Mini-Me treehouse structures by sanding the bases. The basic knowledge of learning the right grade of sandpaper, and muscle memory of sanding, as well as the smell of sawdust are experiences the children will have each week at Acera. They also used the egg beater drills to make holes for screws in the bases on which they will connect 3-4 branches. Thanks to all the families that went branch collecting after the Nor’easters that we have been experiencing!

With Ms. Estee in architecture, the children in Lower Elementary used the medium of pipe cleaners to form structures for their Mini-Me’s. By using the figure of themselves in the activity, they are able to imagine themselves in the structure. Ultimately, the structures that are made in the weeks and months to come will become a basis for their storytelling and writing. Accessing each child’s imagination and excitement and putting it on the page will help with fluency!

Because there is a big emphasis on building and construction with specialists, during Thematic Choice on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons we have begun to focus on other homes. Your body is the home for your skeletal system, circulatory system, musculature system… and making the connections to other vertebrates such as our classroom turtle! If your child comes home with a spiked interest in these topics, please know where they are coming from!

Warmly,

Ms. Jen

Welcome Back!

It was lovely to see all the Lower Elementary students back at Acera on Monday. They came back full of stories from the vacation week including multi-night sleepovers, exciting waterparks, and skiing adventures. Some children just really enjoyed “hanging out on the couch”. However your family spent the week, the children didn’t loose any momentum coming back. The energy and excitement about reading, telling stories, drawing, and our theme “Tiny Houses” has increased! Seeing the class reunite was a beautiful thing… while reading “If You Lived Here” by Giles Laroche, one child said “What if WE all lived together in the same house! We could play together every day!

Reading

It is perfectly typical of children in K-1-2 to want to read Chapter Books. The thick books that they see you read! They want to be accomplished readers concuring content (and many, many pages) because they believe that more is better! It is not surprising that when I came back from vacation with all the readers, or instructional reading texts, labeled by difficulty A-R, the students wanted to read the R’s. Just to give perspective, K-3 books are leveled Emergent-Level L, and that is the place where most of the Lower Elementary students can decode, comprehend, and appreciate the stories.

I have a couple of favors….

1. Please refrain from sending in books from home. Oftentimes they are amazing and appropriate, but we are providing books that are at the “just right” instructional level for your individual child. When books come that I am not familiar with, it is hard to determine on-the-spot if it is appropriate or at the right level. We have over 300 catalogued and labeld books… more than enough for the year!

2. Use a bookmark to underline text at home. If your child is reading at home, please encourage reading every word… overall our children want to rush ahead to consume the storyline without reading/understanding each word. Using a piece of paper or a bookmark to underline each line of text helps your child to isolate the words on the page. This will help with comprehension, vocabulary absorption, and spelling patterns.

3. Read to your child each night. At this time of literacy development, children need a rich diet of vocabulary, complex storylines and characters, and watching you point to words as you read. Just the act of watching your finger tracking across the page helps your child with the right to left progression that they need while reading. It only takes 15-20 minutes, but the long-term benefits are tremendous. If there are older siblings at home, they can be instructed on how to read-aloud to your LE student!

4. Always stop the Read-A-Loud for unfamiliar words. We tell the children that we will take questions, comments, and connections after the story is finished so all the children will get the flow of the story. However, if children are unfamiliar with a word, they are always welcome to ask a question!! We used the children’s collective knowledge about words like Adobe, or desert, that came up while reading this week. They know so much! At home they are relying on you to build their vocabulary.

Messy Art Saturday!