Thursday, November 29, 2018

Duck? or Rabbit?

One of the kids' favorite activities this week as we came back from the break was our class-wide vote on whether this famous pictures depicts a duck or a rabbit. They learned about the concept of "majority rules,"  and learned how to express their opinions respectfully, even when they don't agree with others. This activity partially stemmed from an important Social Emotional Learning concept: listening. The students loved being able to vote; be sure to ask them about that activity if you get the chance!

Other news this week: we switched things up in our daily schedule. From Mondays-Wednesdays, math is in the morning right after our morning meeting, and reading was moved to the slot between specialist and lunch. On Thursdays, we will still do reading in the morning to accomodate our book buddies, and math stations will happen before lunch. We worked on making patterns together as a class, creating numbers in different ways on tens frames, and addition. My goal is to make things as hands-on and activity-based as possible, along with a few worksheets sprinkled here and there. The kindergarteners seemed to embrace the change and greatly enjoyed our new math activities!

Finally--we have had our very first SNOW DAY of the season today! Get outside, enjoy learning in nature, and most of all, STAY SAFE! See you all next week :)



Friday, November 9, 2018

Winter is coming!

An easterly wind blew through the valley yesterday, reminding us all that winter is on its way! Regardless of the cold, the kindergarteners bundled up and hit the trail for our Shirley Canyon hike, stopping along the way to find curved sticks and branches with which to fashion bows and arrows. The students fully embraced the activity, galavanting around and chasing imaginary 'bad guys' in worlds of their own creation. One of my favorite parts of working with kindergarteners is seeing how much they love imaginary play. It takes me back to my own childhood, which I spent mostly outdoors, and I'm so grateful for the proximity of Shirley Canyon so that they can experience outdoor play and adventures like this every week.

Things picked up in math this week, with more games and activities surrounding the number 10. For some, this meant counting within 10 and writing the number; for others, this meant creating different addition sentences and showing 10 in as many ways as they could. In reading, we finished unit 2 and moved onto unit 3, where we will spend more concentrated time on letter sounds and sight words to create simple sentences for some, and more complicated sentences for others.

The kids really enjoyed learning about American symbols this week, and loved writing about what they would do if they were president. Where would they live? How would they ride around? In their carriage, helicopter or on a unicorn named Twilight Sparkles? My favorite question and comment the students made about being president of the United States was, "Why haven't we had a woman president? I wanna be president someday and I'm a girl!" We have some strong, independent thinkers in our class, that's for sure! Our future is in good hands!

Breaking the Geode
Finally, we welcomed our Special Me's sister to come read a book to us, and greatly enjoyed watching a geode get cracked open. Each student was able to keep a piece! In addition, we had the privilege of having a student's great-grandma as a volunteer in our classroom this week, experienced Harvest of the Month with various tastings of pomegranates, and had the fifth graders step up to be our reading buddies this week, since fourth grade was on a field trip and eighth grade is in the throes of reading Macbeth. The students were able to be flexible and enjoyed their time immensely. This will be good practice for the flexibility needed with next week's shorter schedule and guest teacher....until then, and have a wonderful long weekend!




Help from Great Grandma

Tasting Pomegranate juice

Friday, November 2, 2018

Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, and more!

What a fun, full week this week! The anticipation for Halloween was palpable with increased energy in the classroom, and we were able to direct that towards fun art and food projects on Halloween. This would NOT have been possible without the help of dedicated parent volunteers who came in for two different hour-long time slots to help out. The kids LOVED it, and it was an awesome opportunity for me to stand back and observe from a different perspective than I normally am able to. A HUGE thank you to everyone who volunteered with ideas, crafts, or coming in to lead the stations. And thank you to all of the parents for supporting all of the amazing costumes the kids wore on Halloween for the parade!

The students were also very excited to get back into the normal routine for Pizza Thursday, and our hike up to Shirley Canyon. They really missed it last week! We were treated with a spectacular day of warm fall weather. The kids greatly enjoyed clambering all over a gnarled, lichen-covered juniper tree, which also offered great photographic opportunities. 

We made it back just in time for the Dia de los Muertos celebration, led by the wonderful, dedicated and creative Spanish teacher, Ms. Monica. It truly was an authentic, immersive experience, and one of the students told me "Ms. Maryn, this reminds me of my Nana who died!" This is exactly why Dia de los Muertos is celebrated, so it was neat to see the kids have such strong connections to the presentation put on at Creekside. 
Thank you again for another awesome week; enjoy the pictures!


Last Day Pics and more!

Walking in at the Closing Ceremonies Well, we did it. We made it! Congratulations to all these bright, spunky, energetic kindergarteners...