We Are All Together Again… + Caleb! Welcome

Our circle is complete with Maya joining us in November and this week we welcomed Caleb! The LE’s had a second opportunity to practice their gracious brand of kind leadership. Bending down to speak to Maya eye-to-eye, taking Caleb’s hand walking down the hall, and showing him where we store the stray parakeet feathers.

Art

In the new year we will be having Art on Friday afternoons, and Woodshop on Monday afternoons, providing an additional literacy block in the morning. Today Camilla presented a lesson about birch trees and perspective. Using several widths of masking tape the children made their own birch tree forest. While working the children talked about making their forests in the season of their birthdays. So we had winter, spring, summer and fall scenes.  Beautiful!

Writing

The excitement of returning to books in progress was exciting to watch! The focus this week has been on the editing process… planning, drafting, editing, and the final copy. The stage was set in the fall when we played “edit message” as a class. I would write a short paragraph with a number of mistakes in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. The children edited the message, one mistake at a time. This week I let the children know that everyone creates rough drafts… even grown-ups! If you could reinforce this at home, it would make quite an impact!

Reading

Everyone was given a reading journal when they returned to create a running log of the books that they are reading. By writing down the titles, each student will pay closer attention to spelling in addition to creating a running record. It has the side effect of encouraging children to start and finish books. You should see the concentration and focus on the children’s faces each afternoon during Rest and Read!

Math

Over the break I made shelf inserts to double our math material area! It has made quite an impact with children discovering materials that were hidden. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division games were incredibly exciting and several times I heard “Math is my favorite time of day! And why is math time (one hour) so short!”

Thematic Choice

During the first three days back, getting reacquainted to classmates and classroom materials was a priority. Block building, painting, finger knitting, led to lessons about sharing space, working collaboratively, and understanding the perspective of others.

All-School Skating Field Trip

It was such fun skating with all the LE students! It was impressive to see children hitting the ice who never been on skates before. Several children acted like mini Zambonies skimming “snow” off the ice to make mini snowman on the edge of the rink. Awesome!

Happy Weekend!

Ms. Jen