Winding Down

As the days slowly begin to grow longer, our time together is drawing to an end. In Writer’s Workshop the children have been busy writing and editing drafts of their “How To” books. The topics range from teaching friends how to walk a guinea pig and play a video game, to how to play basketball, go to sleep or make a friend. Last week the children worked with their buddies to help with the editing process. Below you can see a video of the changes J.L. realized he had to make after reading his book to Q.G.

J.B Teaches Q.G How To Play Basketball from Lisa J on Vimeo.

In math the children have been busy practicing how to read an analog clock to the hour and half hour. Some children are already using their ability to skip count by 5s to read to the nearest 5 or 10 minutes. We have also started sorting and identifying coins. Some of the poems we are using in class to help us remember are as follows: “Penny penny, easily spent, copper brown and worth one cent.”
“Nickel, nickel, thick and fat. Your worth 5, I know that!”
“Dime, dime, little and thin. I remember! Your worth 10!”
“Quarter, Quarter, BIG and bold. Your worth 25 I’m told.”
For a fun break from our normal math routine we read the books "M&M Addition" and "M&M Subtraction". The children enjoyed sorting, graphing, comparing, adding subtracting and yes, finally eating their M&M’s!

From M&M Math

From M&M Math

From M&M Math

In science this week our focus has been on caterpillars! We have found caterpillars all around campus and have successfully watched Harry the caterpillar transform into Flappy the butterfly. Inspired by the books “Diary of a Fly” “Diary of a Spider” and “Diary of a Worm” the children have been making their own “Diary of Flappy” book. Through reading some of their diary responses I have found that “Flappy is Happy because he has forgotten about the outside world.” and “Flappy is sad because his chrysalis won’t let him fly.” On our next post I will try to include some images of the responses.