Chugging Along at Full Speed

We have been heading toward the last day of school like one of the world’s fastest trains! (Only Noah could tell us which train is currently the fastest in the world!) We are finishing our Mini-Me tree houses, writing fiction and non-fiction stories about them, and working on the final drafts of our story books. We look forward to sharing everything with you on Museum Walk Morning Wednesday, June 6th at 9:00am. 

Museum Walk

On Wednesday, June 6th, Children should arrive as usual to prepare for Museum walk. We will need from 8:30-9:00 to set-up and practice for the sharing, and parents are welcome to wait outside or in the lobby. At 9:00am, we will open our door and share a song or two before children share their projects individually with you. After hearing from your child, parents are encouraged to walk around and hear from the other LE’s as time allows. After enjoying LE, there will be lots of other exciting happenings all over the school! If you are unable to attend, you are welcome to invite a special friend to attend the event in your place. This can be an Aunt, Uncle, Grandparent, or family friend.

Persistance!

Multiple times this week, I have witnessed a greatly increased spirit of persistence among the students in Lower Elementary. Sewing in straight lines and in circles, writing a 5-page long story, building structures with 100’s of Keva planks, and making intricate and beautiful structures out of pattern blocks. This grit and deturmination has really grown since January, and Acera is the perfect place to embrace this growth mindset. Children are encouraged to have an attitude that anything is possible!

Emotions are Running High… but we are hanging on!

With all the talk of finishing up projects and the end of the year, children have been a bit emotional. I have been trying to spend some more time outside and in snack and lunch with them. Children have been a little more tired from all the playground time, and we have needed to slow down the pace and return to some of the materials that we used in the beginning of January such as Cuisonnaire  rods. Sticking to the routines, keeping things predictable has become even more important! The celebration on June 6th will be wonderful, but don’t be surprised if we see some tears.

I hope that you have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend,

Jen

Happy Mother’s Day!

We had another wonderful week in Lower Elementary! I just finished reading the children’s journal entries from Friday morning. They wrote about making self-portraits, working on their mini-tree houses, and having great fun in math. One of the biggest observations from the week is the desire to collaborate and connect in all areas of the curriculum from writing to our theme. Students in groups of two and three have been writing book series, and we built a growing greenhouse on Friday afternoon.

Friendships

The children have been interested in more and more in collaborating with classmates. Working together on the “Village”, the collection of mini-treehouses, creating a book store with classmates, and writing book series as a team. In the afternoon, many of the children are self-selecting friends to participate in book clubs. It has been wonderful to see the increased ability to make productive decisions, and the capacity to navigate complex projects and relationships.

Green House Construction

Last Friday in Architecture, the children planted Morning Glories and Nasturtiums which will turn into a greenhouse. The buckets of climbing plants will cover the poles and mesh fencing, creating a leafy structure that the Lower Elementary class will use on the playground in the years to come!!

My Appreciation

Thank you for the outpouring of teacher appreciation last week! The handmade notes from children, thoughtful cards from you, and all the delicious treats were amazing. The climate and culture at Acera has been so warm and welcoming, and the parents are incredibly supportive and generous.

With Appreciation,

Ms. Jen

Today the Lower Elementary class were privy to the week-long mystery of “The Case of the Missing Architecture Structures”. Estee emailed me on Tuesday to ask if I had moved the bin containing 12 site plans and 12 cardboard bases with hoop enclosures. The children had been working on them for a few weeks. The designs were a small prototype of the life-sized growing vine home that we will building outside on the playground for the next several weeks.

Wednesday and Thursday brought searches through the building, more emails and pictures circulating through Acera without any leads. Today at morning meeting, after sharing the story, the children wanted to solve the mystery themselves! Armed with clipboards, pencils, and many theories, we questioned and searched. We followed up with leads, and several children spent the better part of snack and recess continuing to take notes.

While the mystery is still unsolved, the LE students are ready and able to theorize about the possible reasons for the disappearance. In addition, they are excited about building the life-sized structure on the playground during the warmer weather to come!

Math

After the April break we have begun an open exploration of place value using many different manipulatives. The overwhelming favorite has been using money… pennies, dimes, 1 dollar bills and a ten-dollar bill. The children roll a die to see how many pennies to take from the “bank”. When they reach ten pennies, they need to say “STOP” and trade for one dime. They continue to add pennies, trade for dimes, and when they reach 10 dimes they can trade for a dollar. An extension of this game will be for the children to have ten dollars and to “spend” it subtracting a little at a time until they reach zero.

Having a deep understanding of place value will help the children as they work with bigger and bigger numbers and explore the operations of multiplication and division. We have been working with these operations in large and small groups, as well as individually. The children’s strong and steady progress in math will be fun to share at Conference Day, May 21st.

Writing and Reading

There have been many themes bubbling up in Writing Workshop this week. The maze work continues to be of interest, but making pop-up books and books with little envelopes with secret messages has also been popular. The creation of information books, “The Book of Leaves and Flowers” will inspire many. The students have also been exposed to nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and the use of the corresponding symbols. This has helped greatly when adding detail and excitement into the writing. “The train thundered down the track!” sounds much more interesting than, “This is a train.”!

Writing notes to me and classmates has been a bustling activity all throughout the day. Today during Choice Time, I was given a clue… the first part of a scavenger hunt with clues and messages leading me to a tiny tree house with a present of a mini-notebook for my mini-Jen. The fluency and practical (fun) use of writing is just what we want to see from our K’s and 1’s!!

During Cozy Cubby Book Time, when children can read or rest, a book club has been working on using expression. Reading out loud with expression is the biggest predictor of reading comprehension. During the read-aloud children will read text in quotations, and naturally self-correct when they understand the meaning of the character’s words. This comprehension “fine-tuning” is a wonderful way to end the year in book clubs.

Theme

Measuring, building, imagining, problem-solving and persevering with challenges has been a continuing theme in the Lower Elementary Class. With this focus the children have developed a “can-do” attitude that has expanded to “I am an expert and I can teach you if you want.” This week we had expert “bicycle drawers”, “stair constructors”, “word spellers”, and “fort builders”. These skills are essential, as are the fine/gross motor strength and coordination that the students are developing through these fun and engaging activities. All the “hands-on” learning has made all the difference in the explosion of storytelling and writing.

Happy Weekend,

Ms. Jen

 

The school was a buzz this week with ASTEAMS and the upcoming vacation. The LE’s went off to explore the posters and projects with a partner and discovered many things including gum, caramel, and a group of mice with tails of different colors! They were certainly impressed with the displays, and were charged to ask questions or give a compliment.

Writing Workshop

The children’s writing has been exploding this week, especially after I read a book written by a First Grader I had in 1993! Adrian Suddenly Michael (why her middle name is Suddenly is another story) told a lovely story about a cat that met a dinosaur that has been inspiring students ever since! The children are excited about finishing up some of their many stories so that we can turn them into “hardcover books”.

In addition to writing stories, children have been building compound words, learning about the role of the verb, and developing great details in their illustrations.

Math Groups

This week we have been working on adding, subtracting, and finding equivalent fractions by using manipulatives from 1 whole to twelfths. The Lower Elementary students have been receiving individualized instruction over the last two weeks, and Vanessa and I are moving from child to child to give direct instruction and targeted practice on the concept of fractions. We have seen great improvement in understanding, motivation, and fine motor skills. Many of the children have been taught the “trick” of carrying the 1 in dynamic addition, however, we are working on trading up with actual place value blocks. This will help internalize the concept of 1’s, 10’s, 100’s, and 1,000’s. Once they master and comprehend this we will be moving into more abstractions.

Thematic Study

Our “Mini-Me” Tree Houses are taking shape and sparking the children’s imaginations! Building a tiny home for thier figures has been a wonderful way to build fine motor skills with tons of cutting, gluing, painting, tying, connecting, and squeezing those hot glue guns. Cries of “I can’t do it! It is too hard!” has been replaced with “Look what I did! I did it!” We are purposefully developing independance (I can do it myself), interdependance (I can ask a friend for help), and perserverance (I know this might be hard, but I am going to try and do my best).

We are also working on patience, flexibility, and problem-solving. How do I build an elevator? How can I attach the rope bridge from one “tree” to another? Also the children are working on making independant decisions. Do I want to use sticks or rocks on my exterior? What color am I going to paint the inside? How am I going th attach my tree house to my “trees” so that is strong, sturdy, and beautiful. The adults and children are acting as coaches and extra pairs of hands during Tuesday and Thursday afternoons… and having tons of fun!

Happy Spring Break!

Love,

Ms. Jen

This Week

We had a week full of energetic interests! Oliver brought in the book, Young Lancelot, that the children enjoyed so much they wanted to read it again. Half moral tale, half about the training that goes into becoming a knight, there was a little bit of something for everyone! The topics of adoption, arrogance, giants and battles were discussed by the children.

The other interesting development was that many children in the class started drawing mazes during writing workshop, with the goal of producing a class book of Mazes. We came together to discuss how to describe the detailed images contained in the exciting pathways. The interest most likely came from the start of a new woodworking project, designing and building marble mazes with Mr. Josh in shop. It will be intersting to see how this writing project eveolves.

Friendships

Love is in the air, and the children are making discovering new friends even this late in the school year! Begging for playdates, playing cops and robbers on the playground, and wanting to be all together sharing experiences such as testing out the strenght of a block structure. We are having fun!

Building and Construction

The children continue to make progress on thier Mini-Me treehouses, which are really taking shape. There was lots of discussion about needing more Choice Time, and I completely agree! There is so much to do in Lower Elementary and not enough time! I am pleased as the children come in each day excited about the day ahead, and today they were disappointed that Writing Workshop was shortened due to the Poetry assembly.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Ms. Jen

 

 

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!

 

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