Circling Around

"Why are we visiting a farm from Colonial times when we studied that back in February?"

I answered that it was because this was when we could go on the field trip. I also mentioned that for lots of learning, we need to learn things multiple times before we remember them, and so we circle around to big ideas more than once. As they listened to Mike from the Mabee Farm and answered his questions, I had a chance to see how much they remembered from those lessons in February. He mentioned that he was impressed with their questions and curiosity, and I was proud of all that they knew and of what they learned from him.

Rose's PK and K Class

• We painted clouds with soft puff paint.

• We played "musical number dots", a game of music, dancing, jumping and counting. 

• We used play dough snakes to practice straight, wavy, and zigzag lines. 

• We traced our hands then used thumb tacks to trace along the lines. 

• We practiced identifying and writing the numbers 1 - 3 and played a numbered bean bag toss game.

• We worked with the letters F, G, H, and I. We made books, hunted for things that started with a certain letter, and sang songs related to each letter.

Tracy's 1st - 4th Class

In math, our first graders worked with double digit dice rolls, pattern block puzzles, splitting ten, and place value (thinking of numbers between 10 and 20 as a 10 plus some ones). Our second-grade class continues to develop an understanding of fractions, particularly halves, thirds, and fourths. The third-grade class was working with equivalent fractions, making different areas, and dividing money equally among different people. The fourth graders are continuing their work with angles (splitting a known angle of 90. 180. or 360 into smaller angles) and with solving complicated multistep problems. The third and fourth graders need to practice their multiplication "fast facts" for a few minutes each day (try tying it to an activity like walking the dog together or the car ride to school each day). The first and second-grade classes should be doing the same thing with adding and subtracting within 20.

In literacy, we finished our worry books this week. We discussed, drew, and wrote about things we can do while ignoring our worries, how we can keep our bodies strong, and things that we do well that make us feel confident. We also worked with parts of speech and tried to figure out why we have uppercase and lowercase letters. Our youngest reading group worked through "A Kiss for Little Bear." While our older groups read from "Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices" and "My Side of the Mountain." They're almost done with both, and the kids will help me figure out how we share a bit of each book.