Maple Room News
April 20 - 24th
Learning through Exploration
Several children spent the week designing and assembling a circus in the block area. This circus is complete with two functional and exciting arenas, bleachers, and instructional areas for children to learn common circus skills such as tight rope walking and high-risk balancing. The bleachers adorning the circus were specifically designed for children, adults and the elderly alike. Bleachers designed for children had written balancing instructions taped beneath the seats, should children feel so inclined to move their bodies while watching the show. Seats for the elderly included buttons that could eject them safely from their seats, should they experience difficulty while standing up. There was also space for a cane.
Our space center also bloomed this past week. Children have taken to rockets. They're assembling many at the moment, most modeled after actual NASA rockets they've researched. Collaboratively all children are working to build a larger rocket with a large structure.
If anyone has any ideas, expertise or experience in designing and launching rockets, please reach out to us. We'd love your support.
Why Garden?
Naturally, we concluded that gardens can look and feel a variety of ways. They can be large and small, indoors or out. Gardens can make us feel a number of ways: joyous, glum, adventurous and excited. We can also engage in an endless amount of activity while within them. While inside gardens, we can run, climb, read, dig, dash and write, so long as we're respectful and aware of the living things that surround us.
We concluded our week with a visit to the Walt Whitman houses. They're is an extraordinary community garden there, one that is breath taking in both depth and display.
We look forward to exploring indoor and home gardens next week!
Thank you all for your continued support, flexibility and consideration.
Reading, Writing and Math
Reading Workshop
We concluded our reading unit this week. We now understand that books and reading can help us find the answers to the questions that we have about the world. We shared so much of what we learned with our partners.
The Maples have also been working hard on staying focused during private and partner reading. We went to guided reading groups this week and learned many new reading strategies.
For read aloud, we read Skin Again by bell hooks. We felt that this book connected to our lives and our four promises. This book taught us:
"That you can have light or dark skin...and that's okay."
"Our identity means that we are happy doing what we want."
"My skin is different from other people's skin, but I can still be happy."
Our sight words for this week are: came, big, been, after.
You can help your Maple practice their sight words, but writing them down on index cards. Your child can trace the word, sky write the letters in the word, and spell it out loud. This practice will help them with their reading and writing!
Writing Workshop
Our writing time this week was very peaceful. The Maples are starting to understand that writers need a calm space to get their ideas out and on their paper. We were introduced to two new writing tools this week: Vowels Chart and Personal Word Walls.
We have been studying vowels in our reading and we think that it's pretty cool that there is at least one vowel in every word and in most names. We spent some time going on vowel hunts in our classroom and in the books that we were reading together. We realized, vowels are really important and we should know what sounds they make. Strong writers use vowels to spell the middle parts (often the trickiest) of words. We created a vowel chart together...maybe you can create one at home!
We also spent some time discussing how important our word wall has become to all of us. The Maples know that they can go to the word wall and take down a word when they need to spell it. We realized that this was taking some time away from our writing. On Thursday, the Maples received their owl personal word walls. We keep this tool out when we are writing so that we can quickly look at it when we need to spell a sight word.
We will be sending home a copy of this personal word wall, so that your child can use it at home when they are writing.
Math Workshop
Children have been exploring compensation and equivalence while telling stories about passengers moving up and down two levels on a double decker bus.
Ask your children about the double decker bus this weekend.
Practice making a number in many ways using fun materials at home.