Peace, Pose and Poetry

On Halloween many parents saw our peace, pose and poetry routine for the first time! After morning work, around 9:00-9:15, we start our morning meeting with the 3P’s. A quiet moment of peace where we close our eyes, take a few breaths, and observe a little silence. This moment of peace serves as a reset if a child had a difficult morning, very high or low morning work time, or just feeling the first moment we are together as a whole group. When that is over, we have shout a raucous “GOOD MORNING” and send around a hello and a handshake. After the handshake goes around the circle, I randomly pick a YOGA pose (our second P) from our deck of yoga cards. The third P is a poem! The children have particularly enjoyed hearing poems read-aloud, especially the book, Be Glad Your Nose Is on Your Face: And Other Poems by of Jack Prelutsky. The children find it hilarious!!

 

Math Challenge

While some children are working on finding all the combinations of numbers that add up to ten, some are adding subtracting and dividing numbers into the thousands! For others, logic problems are the most challenging. The puzzle pictured above has been a real favorite. It involves 9 squares with numbers 1 to 9 printed on each side. The challenge is to make a 3×3 square with all connected sides equal to 10. Here is the problem solved for the first time! Children want to do it again and again to see if there is a trick to solving it that is easily repeated. Any ideas? Shhh… don’t tell anyone! We want to figure an answer to that problem out by ourselves.

Child Visits… and a New Classmate!

We have been welcoming potential Acera students into our classroom over the last couple of weeks, and it has been a delight to see the LE students climbing over each other to assist and play with the visitors. Above you can see Roman and Zachary holding Maya’s hand, and Aria getting into the photo from behind. Nice photo bomb Aria!

The good news is that Maya enjoyed her visit so much that she is joining our class next week! It is amazing to have another delightful Kindergarten girl, an amazing mathematician, and kind friend join our team!

A Nest for Celeste

Just because we finished our first chapter book, A Nest for Celeste, it doesn’t mean the interest in the story has waned! Children are making their own stories based on the characters, programming Scratch computer models based on Celeste’s basket ride over the Mississippi River, and we are still weaving the giant basket big enough to hold an LE’r! It has really created a writing explosion! At pick-up today a child asked, “Can I stay here and write some more?”

Warmly,

Ms. Jen