Pine Class News
June 5
Integrated Unit
This week we learned a lot in regards to how Brooklyn is connected to the rest of New York State.
Madeline from the Beech class came in to share a sweater she had that was completely from New York State. Ask your children to see if the can remember the process the sweater went to go from Plum the Sheep to the sweater she now wears.
Now that we finished our trips to Snow Hill Farm and Hastings-On-Husdon, we began to ask ourselves if we could live in any community we wanted (urban, suburban and rural) which would you want to live in and why? We realized that in order to do that we needed to think about the benefits and challenges each community had. Ask your child which community they would rather live in and why.
Since we have been looking at the New York State map so often we realized that all of the major cities are in a line going across New York State. We had a discussion and came to the conclusion that the Erie Canal connects all of the cities together. Ask your child if they know what the Erie Canal is and why it connects all of the cities in New York
As we were thinking about why all of the major cities in New York are in a line, Beatrix looked up at the Easel and says "Wait this easel says its made in New York." We realized looking at the brand that both our chairs and easel's are both from the same brand meaning they are all made in New York. Then we looked at our big New York State map to see if we could find where in New York it came from.
Look through your house and see if you can find anything that is made in New York. Ask your child to use the same process we use in school to map the object on a New York State map.
Exploration
During exploration this week we spent a lot of time relearning some of the activities from the art studio and finishing up some last minutes things before the end of the school year. Here are some of the activities we did:
Guided painting
Brainstorming and interviewing each other
Writing each others books
Writing lyrics to Mavis staples song "My Own Eyes"
Brooklyn Bears Carlton Avenue Garden
On Wednesday we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and went for a walk to Brooklyn Bears Carlton Avenue Garden. While we were there we had about 20 minutes to explore. After we came back together to discuss what we found. Here's some things we discovered:
"I found something that looks like a strawberry over there but strawberries grow on bushes so it must be a raspberry."
"I found this long stick. It's bamboo cause it looks like what we saw at Hastings-On-Hudson."
"We shouldn't kill the snakes because we need them."
"I found some holes in the ground. It must be from the rats or the snakes."
"Chloe has her snake book with her. Let's see if we can find the snake we found in it."
Reading
Since we were already in the Brooklyn Bears Carlton Avenue Garden we took advantage of the weather and did some independent reading and partner reading. Reading in the garden was a perfect start to our new Nonfiction book clubs because books such as Chloe's snake book was used to explain some of the things we saw.