Oak Room Newsletter
Week of December 14, 2015
REMINDER: MONDAY IS THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL before winter break! We will resume on 1/4!
This week, as told by the Oaks:
We wrote in paper book things. We had different toys in recess and played with them. In Studio in a School the people that were in our group went into the other group. Ellie did a read aloud. We cancelled writing workshop.
Oops--Tuesday and Wednesday were such busy days, the Oaks forgot to record things from both days!
We did the December birthday celebration. We had cupcakes and chips and veggie sticks. We did VTS because we haven't done it in so long.
Upcoming Field Trips: American Museum of Natural History and Moma
Chaperones needed!
We have filled all chaperone spots for the Museum of Natural History trip on Friday, 1/8. Thank you for volunteering!! We will be leaving at 9AM by school bus and returning no later than 1PM.
We need 4 chaperones for the Museum of Natural History trip on Friday, 1/29. We will be leaving at 9AM by school bus and returning no later than 1PM.
We also need 4 chaperones for our visit to MOMA on Friday, 1/22. We will be visiting the Picasso Sculpture exhibition. We will leave by school bus at 10:30AM and return around 2PM.
Please email Pascale at pascale@brooklyncompass.org if you are interested!
THANK YOU CHRISTINA!!!
Exploration
Light Blocks
Dramatic Play
Art Center
"I was making a ginger bread stuffed animal for my bed." --Carmen
Literacy
This week we made a bigger chart with Nicola Davies's craft moves, including examples from her books. We also asked ourselves WHY she uses these different moves in her books and added that to our chart. We then picked at least one move to experiment with in our own non-fiction writing.
At home: Continue to encourage your Oak to notice craft moves in their books at home and try them in their own writing.
In reading workshop we worked on two strategies we can use when reading:
*Say the word the best you can, and think about what it means
*Find and think about key words
As part of our non-fiction unit we have been reading books about the human body. The Oaks read together books about the respiratory system and nervous system. Ask your Oak to tell you some facts from the books at home!
Math
In math this week we started a new unit (that we visited last year in kindergarten) called The Double-Decker Bus. In this unit we are focusing on early number sense. Using rekenreks (arithmetic racks), children are encouraged to automatize basic facts by focusing on relationships and the use of strategies such as doubles and near doubles (for example: 8+7 = 7+7+1).
We read The Double-Decker Bus, a story about a girl whose dad drives a double decker bus and tries to figure out how many passengers are on both levels of the bus. We spent a day exploring the rekenreks, becoming familiar with the five- and ten-structure of the racks, and developing strategies to figure out how many passengers were riding the bus. We explored how numbers of beads on the rekenrek that are equivalent can be arranged differently. We worked on finding easy ways and tricky ways to arrange the passengers on the bus.