Month: October 2017

What a wild day! Ninjas galore, skeletons and heroes, princesses and ponies. We had a blast at the parade and enjoyed seeing everyone dressed up. (If you have any cute pics from the parade and want them shared, email them to me  mrkrugerchi (at) gmail.com and I’ll make an album of them on the site). We also engaged in some learning, believe it or not!

In our read aloud, we heard about how the BFG caught a good dream and a bad dream in jars. Yianni helped us understand why the BFG wouldn’t let the bad dreams go (he wanted to protect other people from the nightmare) and Jerome explained why he shouted (he wanted her to help him right away and was excited); it is great seeing them get better at understanding the implications of character actions and infer their emotional states. Paolo was excited to draw what he thought a jar of nightmare would look like, and we all agreed it would look a little scary.

We painted a little (Teddy was excited to make a green the same shade as his costume), but that ended pretty quickly. We ended up spending a lot of time playing math games, both our own created ones and connect 4. Tove explained how you scored points in her game by going all the way around the board, while Gia thought it was a lot like hers except Tove’s board had more spots. Niki explained that she knew who’s turn it was by counting the moves people made, and Timo explained why he wanted to have a chance to play on his own team, since it would let him play more times. All of these realizations are mathematical and strategic reasoning that help the students blossom as critical thinkers. If you’re playing a game at home, make sure you are explaining why you make a specific move and ask them for their reasoning when they make a move in the game.

In our building challenge today, I busted out our puzzle cards. The puzzle cards challenge the kids to fill in the shaded portion of a card and then try to solve it in multiple ways. Sokrates used the “P” card to see how he could write his name in blocks. Bisola built her ‘Z’ card then tried using it as a base to build a tower. We are going to continue to use their puzzle cards to help them decompose (break apart) shapes and solve problems.

In our final sharing time, we had some cool ideas to talk about. For example, Niki thought it was fair that each person in her group just got a pumpkin, because none of them wanted the candy corn :(. Rebecca worked with me and put the candy corn out one at a time, switching between the spots to make sure we each got the same amount. I’m sad to see the end of sharing time, but I can’t wait to start on our new challenge.

We also had two students from Ms. Theresa’s class come in to request candy donations for the troops. They explained how servicepeople can’t come home for Halloween and getting candy from us can brighten their day. The donation buckets will be out Wednesday and Thursday this week, so send in any candy you want to donate! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!

Glad to be back and learning together! The big part of the day, as it was Monday, was our library visit. When we went over, we discussed how to be picky and canny readers. Gia talked about how she looks for characters she likes on the cover, while Rebecca liked to find books with multiple copies, so she could read it at the same time as her friends. After we discussed strategies, the students went to pick out their books. After they skimmed the books, they decided if they wanted to keep the books or trade them in. This practice lets them have greater ownership over their selections and helped them practice using the pictures and covers to understand the story. In related news, the Des Plaines Public Library is holding a Reading Patch Club, and I am officially obsessed. Info can be found here, but I’m talking to the librarian to see if we can do anything as a class, as these badges look super sweet! I’m currently hoping we can do it as a class, since not all of us are in kindergarten, but I’ll keep you in the loop with any information I can find.

In our read-aloud, we reflected on what the title of the chapter “Journey To Dream Country.” Yianni remembered the jars full of dreams and reflected that maybe this was where the BFG got all the dreams. Paolo talked about how normally you can only ‘catch’ dreams in your sleep, but this was a special story. In the story, we saw how the BFG had to go past the mean giants, and Sophie didn’t want to go; Timo explained that even though Sophie probably wanted to go see where the dreams were, she was too scared of the giants. Turns out Sophie was right to be scared, as the mean giants grabbed the BFG and threw him around, playing catch with him. Bisola reflected that, even though the BFG knew all of them as his brothers, they still didn’t treat him well and he probably didn’t like the other giants that much. We are doing a much better job of understanding characters’ emotions and discussing them together.

I know I said last week we were going to move beyond fair-sharing this week, but it was just too perfect to have them practice sharing Halloween candy. With that in mind, today they had to share a mix of chocolate and regular candy corn. Teddy commented that it was way harder to share something fairly that you really want, which I thought was an insightful comment. Since they had different kinds, Sokrates advised his group that they should all give up one, then they would have the same amount of each kind. Niki had a bunch of chocolate, while her partners hardly had any; she said that it was fair because they didn’t want the chocolate ones. Tove was excited because she and Rebecca only had to share with each other and she knew a group of 2 would get more candy each than a group of three.  Paolo also talked a bit before school about how he needs to share his candy with Luka, so it is definitely a relevant skill 🙂

Our other big exploration today was finally finishing making a new set of math games. It was definitely a challenge, but it was inspiring to see the different ways the class approached it (some of the class made theirs last week, but we finally finished). For example we had a number of heart based games, but they were all a little different. Bisola explained that her was a race from the top of the heart to the bottom, but you could go down either side. Rebecca, on the other hand, made hers as a leaping game from heart to heart; Paolo wanted to do the same thing, but he wanted to make it tougher by using more hearts.  Anja used a heart, but decided to name it Queen Princess Treasure, after the stickers she used to decorate it. Jerome was worried people wouldn’t know the order to go through his, so he used the number line to number the spots. Gia wanted to make sure hers wasn’t too long, so she thought 12 spots was a good length for her game. Timo decided to include a trap spot, and landing there sends the player back to the start. Sokrates actually used his stickers to create enemies that you need to fight if you land on specific spots; we have talked about how the combat will work, but haven’t come to any firm rules yet. Yianni drew in a water line on his game, where going under it meant that your piece was underwater. I have been absolutely blown away by the creativity and rigor they have shown in these games. Moving forward, our goal is going to be understanding game design (I have a lot of squares, I should make my players use a larger-numbered die; having a trap spot right before the end makes it more exciting; etc.) and writing the directions on the game, so it is easier for our classmates to play our games without us there. All in all though, super cool games!

It was a fitting day to wrap up the week, as we also wrapped up a number of our projects. We had what is likely to be our final official sharing mat, wrapped up our work with the old play-doh, and are moving on from our eye investigations. On to bigger and better things!

For our last sharing activity, I was thrilled to see a great deal of diversity in how they shared one each of honey teddy, chocolate teddy, and animal crackers with 2 people. Niki explained that she and Anja only had to split the chocolate, as they didn’t see much difference between the honey teddy and the an

imal cracker. Timo and Jerome, on the other hand, split the animal cracker since it was bigger and a different shape, but didn’t care who got the honey and who got the chocolate. Finally, Gia and Teddy split ALL of the cookies, so they would each have the same amount of everything. This was a perfect capstone. They are understanding what it means to fair share and are comfortable enough with the process to have a conversation about what they actually care about. This is a great display of their improved ability to divide, but just as great at showing how their social and discussion skills have grown in the past month. While we might revisit this throughout the year as a refreshers and extensions, I encourage you to try this with your child when the opportunity arises, just to help them fully internalize it!

In painting and stamping our play-doh sculptures, people approached painting a 3-d object in very different ways. Rebecca painted each of the holes in her sculpture a different color, to make an almost rainbow. Teddy had fun covering his play-doh ball with different colors of paint a

nd rolling it around the paper. Timo painted his snake black and explained it was a ninja snake, and Yianni advised him on how mixing black into the blue made it into a darker blue. Sokrates had made a gingerbread person with is play-doh, put just the feet in paint, and had his person ‘walk’ all over the paper, making footprints as it walked around. Jerome painted his figures with costumes and told us how they were getting ready for Halloweeen. Anja helped us all by realizing that, when the other colors mixed with the white, they couldn’t use it anymore and it disappeared. She suggested that the white paint go in the middle of the plate, so people can use it without it getting dirty. I’m looking forward to more opportunities for them to paint and create sculptures.

Our building project was to make either our house or part of our house, like a room or furniture. Gia told us how she wanted to use the big 8-unit blocks to build her house, as her house was big. Yianni made sure his house included cages to hold his pets, while Teddy liked building a bed and seeing if it was comfortable to lay on. Timo was building his bedroom, but Sokrates pointed out that his bed wasn’t flat and suggested he change it into his headboard. Rebecca experimented with different ways to construct her roof to get it to look right. This was a bit of tough building challenge, but it was great seeing how they approached a challenge and w

orked together to overcome it.

We recorded what we learned about our eyes in our journal, and it was interesting seeing what they had retained. A lot of people remembered what it was like seeing in the different colors, while Gia wrote ‘eyeball’ at the top of the page and then drew with all of the different colors her eye could see. Jerome and Sokrates had a discussion about what was the difference between the retina and the ‘poo-pil’ (I could have died). I am thrilled with the knowledge they have gained in the last two weeks and how they better understand this part of their bodies.

Our read-aloud today was painful for Mr. Chris. The BFG shared frobskottle with Sophie. Frobskottle is like soda but the bubbles don’t rise in the liquid, they sink. Well, if bubbles going up makes you burp, you can guess what happened when the bubbles sink. It stunk. All those bubbles made the characters whizzpop, which you can probably guess made the class break up. A LOT of our chapter sketches featured ‘whizzpops’. When we were discussing the chapter pictures from yesterday, Sokrates disagreed with Bisola’s sketch, as it show

ed the Bloodbottler smiling, and he thought the giant would be unhappy after biting the snozzcumber. Tove laughed because Sophie started the chapter thirsty, just after Tove came back from getting a drink.

A few housekeeping announcements. First, book orders are due on Monday. I sent home another copy of the order, or you can use the link on the right. Second, in the parent notes today they announced the parent teacher conference times. Don’t forget to sign up, and, if none of them work for you, contact me and we’ll set up another time. Hope everyone has a great weekend and can’t wait to get to work on Monday!

Today was likely to be the last day of our eye investigation, so we wrapped it up in style, with some pretty slick shades. We found out in our video that the parts of our eyes see in red, green, and blue, so we wanted to find out what that would be like. With our colored shades, we investigated what changed color and what didn’t look very different; we recorded our findings in our journals. Rebecca noticed that the whole city looked more blue, while Teddy liked how the goggles made his paper look red, even though the paper didn’t change color. Niki thought it would be easier to paint with the glasses on since the paper was already colored. When we were recording our findings, Sokrates pointed out how important it was to try on all three colors, because things looked different through each pair. Jerome made my day, as he drew an empty berry and called it a strawberry while wearing the red glasses; we talked about what kind of berry it would be if he put on the blue glasses, and he just smiled. This investigation not only helped us better understand color, it also helped us understand at least a little how our eyes work. If you want to try this at home, dry erase markers wipe off clean and help us recognize that white objects change color to match the glass, while a red object doesn’t look very different through red glasses.

In our read aloud, we heard about Bloodbottler, a giant that was twice as big as the BFG. He burst into the BFG’s cave (who he called a ‘runt’), looking for  the person he thought was there. Sophie was forced to hide INSIDE the snozzcumber, which Anja reminded us tasted very bad, but Bisola reminded her Sophie only went in there to hide. Unfortunately, the BFG didn’t know Sophie was hiding in there, so he tricked Bloodbottler into taking a bite of the snozzcumber! Yianni actually yelped that SOPHIE WAS INSIDE THAT!! Thankfully, the snozzcumber tasted so bad, Bloodbottler spat it out without chewing and Sophie was okay in the end. I was so confused, because I didn’t think the BFG wanted Sophie to get eaten, but Sokrates explained the BFG didn’t know that, otherwise he wouldn’t have let the mean giant eat it. Gia said the mean giant must not have known either, otherwise he wouldn’t have spat it out and would have chewed up Sophie. We were all glad that didn’t happen! It was so great seeing the way the students understand perspective: just because WE knew where Sophie was hiding didn’t mean the GIANTS knew where she was. This is a huge development as readers and just as thinkers, so bring these kind of situations up when you can, because they are critical. Frankly, the world would be a better place all around if we appreciated the power of our own limited perspectives.

In our sharing time today, we had to share 4 stickers, 2 honey teddies, and 2 chocolate teddies with a group of four. Timo explained how glad he was that there were 4 stickers, so they could each get one. Niki convinced her group to break the cookies into little pieces, as they were easier to share with little pieces (this is a critical mathematical insight: more pieces-> easier to share with a group). Tove was thoughtful and insightful, as she set aside one of their circles to use for Paolo, who was absent today. Gia helped her group see if it was a fair share by lining up the pieces to see if they were the same length. We only have a few days left with this activity, so their ability to share unlike objects, discuss what makes something fair, and use pre-division strategies, are so great to see.

Our building project today was to make something from the story. Timo built the mountain the BFG lived in, while Teddy helped by pointing out the mountain should be bumpy. Anja started to make a mountain as well, but got involved in building the cave inside the mountain where the BFG lived, so that was great to see. Gia used her memory as well as her imagination to make the house where Sophie lived before she got kidnapped by the BFG, and Rebecca helped her by adding the window that the BFG reached through to grab Sophie (honestly, I had almost forgotten about the house as well, so it was great to see them thinking about different representations and pieces they could build. Sokrates wanted to build the BFG, but I pushed him to build Bloodbottler as well; he sat for a second, said “I’m going to need more blocks for him,” and started pulling off the blocks he’d need. These abilities to physically construct imaginary structures, pull from different parts of the story, and work collaboratively to create a shared project, are huge skills!

In our painting today, we struggled to use some weird evergreeen fronds I found on a bush! The kids immediately recognized them and delighted in seeing how the fragile and irregular twigs would paint. Yianni recognized that he was able to make four lines at once because of the four points on his twig and even recognized how the different tips had different colors. Jerome differentiated between where he scraped with the branch and where he tapped, making a lot of little dots all at once. It was a weird experience, but it helped us with our fine motor control and to better understand how the shape of an object impacts its use.

Happy Ohi Day to you! We celebrate Ohi day to remember to embrace peace, reject war, and work to make the world a better place for everyone. We started our day by discussing what it means to work for peace, and Tove did a great job comparing it to being good classmates in school. During the program, we sang songs, listened to the history of Ohi Day, and heard about the value of peace. When we finished the program, we came back to the classroom to record our thoughts. We all decided to represent peace in different ways. Yianni drew a hand showing the peace sign, while the hand Gia drew was ‘to be used for helping people’. Anja drew two people playing together instead of fighting, while Sokrates drew a ‘quiet’ picture, to show how peace feels to him. We remembered all the songs we had just sung, so Teddy wrote another song about peace, and Tove showed everyone singing together. (One of my favorites was Jerome’s strawberry picture: “Strawberries taste good,” he explained, “so people don’t fight because the strawberries make them

happy!”) There are a lot of great educational pieces here (representing emotions, using cultural symbols, etc), but today I just want to highlight how important it is for our students to be peacemakers and good citizens of the world. Please, have a conversation today or this week about how we can all work to bring about peace in our lives and make the world a better place!

Even though we spent a good bit of time with the Ohi day activities, we still did a TON of learning today. In our building time, we experimented with shadows and our magnatiles. Teddy realized the tiles were reflecting light onto the rice table and also explained that the shadow of one tile was bigger because it was on top. This linked nicely to what Jerome and Yianni investigated; they explained to me how moving the light and tiles closer to the screen made them brighter but smaller, while further away the shadows were bigger but dimmer. Gia also realized that the shadow of the tiles was bigger than the tiles themselves, and Niki explored how adding more tiles made different colors but made the shadows darker. Bisola liked mixing in a different kind of magnatiles that didn’t cast colored shadows, they just cast black lines. Rebecca showed the class how moving the light made the shadows move, even though the tiles weren’t moving. We learned a lot today about translucency, color blending, and how shadows change with distance, all important pieces of physical knowledge.

Our other big project for the day is happy and sad at the same time. Some of the class started to recognize that our colored play-doh was starting to dry out and we weren’t as excited about the colors as we were before; so now it is time to make a new batch!! Before we cook it up next week, we wanted to do one last project with the batch we already had. Today we picked one last shape to make and left out the play-doh to dry; some of us decided to make sculptures, while others made stamps. Niki realized she had enough to make two different star stamps, while Yianni decided to sculpt a whole lion family. Rebecca wanted to make a cat stamp she could use

to make a really cool kitty picture when it dried, but Sokrates was interested in showing how he could make a worm sculpture without using any tools. Gia used a cookie cutter to make a turkey stamp. It was great for us to experience how to make a stamp, how to create a sculpture, and it will be useful for us to see how what we made changed as it dried and what it will be like to paint it.

In our read aloud today, we found out about the disgusting snozzcumbers the BFG has to eat. Timo managed to infer that we would be talking about what the giant ate, since we reviewed that the last chapter ended with him getting hungry. The biggest part of the read-aloud, however, was the struggle we had  with words like wondercrump, wrapwrascal, snipswinkles, and scotchhopper. Suddenly, Sokrates realized that the BFG was a giant and might not talk like a human, so they might be made up-words. We talked about what

we thought a wondercrump might look like, and things got pretty silly. Our ability to use made up words and infer from a book’s structure what will happen next are foundational skills I am glad to see evidence of in their work.

Just a note, their work with shadows and light has convinced me they would probably benefit from a light table. I was looking around and found some great DIY options that look fun for the kids. This is the one I’ll probably follow. If any of you have an extra under the bed storage container (or other really big, clear-topped plastic container) that you aren’t using, let me know! Hopefully, we’ll find one and get the kids using it soon!

We didn’t get to go outside for recess today, but I am actually almost glad! We barely had time to get all our learning in without recess, but I’m still hoping for sunshine tomorrow.

One of the highlights of our day was the servicepeople that Ms. Theresa brought in. Since we knew we might get nervous in front of the servicepeople and our classmates, we used notecards to write out our questions for them ahead of time. Jerome drew a scared face and explained he wanted to ask them if they ever felt scared. Anja looked outside for a while and decided to ask if they have to work in the rain and if they liked it. Paolo wanted to know if they liked it, while Niki asked why they decided to help people. When we were meeting with the servicepeople, we tried some of the exercises they do to get strong and asked a few of our questions. It was cool seeing them, and we can’t wait to practice some of the exercises they taught us.

Our exploration time was full of surprises and challenges today. In sharing time, we had to share 6 big stickers and 4 little stickers with a group of 4 people. Most of the groups decided to take one big sticker, one little sticker, and put the two left overs in the bag. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see Rebecca and Bisola engaged in a discussion. Rebecca didn’t think it was fair that she had 2 while Bisola had 4 stickers. Bisola countered that Rebecca had 2 big stickers while she only had little stickers. They talked for a little while about if what mattered was the number of stickers or the size of the stickers. When Teddy finished with his sharing group, he realized that he could share his two stickers with himself and Luigi, so each would get one sticker. I was thrilled to see these discussions and hope they continue pushing their learning in different ways.

In our read aloud, we found out that the giant’s huge ears help him hear dreams and other things people can’t hear, like spiders singing and ants talking to each other. Tove predicted that Sophie is about to run away from the Giant, while Sokrates disagreed because he thinks the Giant is being nice for collecting all the dreams.  We’re hoping tomorrow that we find out what Sophie intends to do.

Our big explorations, however, were around what we knew about the eyeball. From the video, we learned that the lens projects an image onto the back of our eye, and that part of our eye sees in color, and part sees in black and white. To better understand the different ways our eyes see, we painted two pictures today: one color and one grayscale. Gia decided to practice painting an eyeball, which I thought was super appropriate. Bisola remembered from the video that there is blood in parts of the eye, so she painted in some red spots. To better understand how the lens of our eyes works, we actually used magnifying glasses, a roll of paper, and a waxed cup to make a projector. I was nervous about how it would go, but they were great at solving the problems and seeing how to make it work. Yianni pointed out that he thought they should tape the cup into position first, so the magnifying glass doesn’t get dirty. Timo made sure they didn’t tape over too much of the lens, as he knew that would block the light. He also helped troubleshoot that his groups first model didn’t work because they taped the lens on the wrong side. Jerome pointed out that he and Teddy couldn’t tell if theirs worked, as a cloud had rolled in and made it too dark to tell; he ran to the supply cubbies, grabbed a flashlight, and used that to check it out. While I am glad they got the experience of working with a lens to project an image, this problem solving is so critical to their development. It was also great seeing teams enlisting the help of other teams they saw did well or looking at other groups’ projectors to get ideas. This type of troubleshooting and analysis is a fundamental aspect of growing as critical thinkers and learners. Congratulations to everybody on their hard work today!

We didn’t let the rain get our spirits down, although it did complicate our schedule a little bit. Instead of going to the library today, we used our time to apply what we had already learned to our exploration time. I am thrilled with the response and the ways we demonstrated our learning. Also, at the end of the day, we watched this video to get another perspective on how eyes work; we talked about how we already knew about pupils and irises, and I hinted that we are diving into lenses and retinas tomorrow.

In our read aloud, we heard that the BFG had a lot of jars full of dreams! We didn’t even know you could put dreams in jars. The books described the BFG as ‘marvelous’ and the way Sophie looked at him as ‘suspicious’, and we practiced looking at things in the classroom suspiciously. Yianni predicted that Sophie is still going to get eaten, which made everyone pretty nervous. Anja explained to us that Sophie was sad because she wasn’t able to be with her mom and dad (she’s an orphan). Timo recognized, when we were talking about the word ‘marvelous’, that marvel was something he recognized from the comics. The class’s ability to make predictions, extrapolate and explain character feelings, and recognize parts of words is growing by leaps and bounds! These are important foundational skills for us to develop as beginning readers.

Our sharing time today was a bit trickier, as we were dividing stickers. Since these weren’t as easy to split evenly, more of us got experience dealing with remainders, something guaranteed by sharing 4 stickers with three people. Sokrates explained it wouldn’t be fair if he had 2 and everyone else only had 1, so it was leftover in the bag. Niki made sure everyone in her group understood why they had to leave the extra in the bag. Tove, on the other hand, was quite adamant that what they needed was 2 more stickers, so that everyone in the group could have 2. This got Gia thinking and she realized that if they had 9 stickers in all, then everyone would get 3 stickers. I could not be happier to see the students starting to make the intuitive connection between multiplication and division, as well as seeing how remainders can be useful in fair sharing.

We spent the remainder of our investigation time in pretty open ended investigations to see how they would apply what they knew. Some students were inspired by the bridge work on curriculum night and wanted to revisit bridge building. Anja built a bridge as part of her larger castle, while Teddy realized that 3 blocks on their sides would be the same height as 6 blocks laying flat. We had two teams of people creating their own games. Timo and Sokrates built impressive ramps and assigned points to the different buckets it could land in. Paolo and Jerome decided to build a racetrack for their cars, assigned points based on the distance a car traveled, and tracked the totals to see who would win. We painted with brushes, but they are obviously used to experimenting with their tools now, as Tove decided to use the hard pointy end of the brush to paint as well as the brush end. Similarly, Anja realized that she wanted to paint on the strips we used for the bridges instead of the regular paper. I am honestly inspired by the way they are using the materials at hand in new ways, using their math skills to understand the world around them, and challenging themselves to build bigger and more intricate structures. If you want to create more opportunities for your child to practice this, I heartily recommend finding nonsense games they like and adding mathematical knowledge to them. For example, on the drive home, give 2 points for red cars and 1 point for black cars and see what your total is after the drive. This kind of everyday math exposure is what will give them a deep appreciation for math, not worksheets!

Speaking of mathematical development, I just had to note some great strategic play I noticed in Connect 4 today. Rebecca noticed that her team needed to be careful when the other team got 2 in a row, because that meant they were getting close. There was a disagreement on if the black team had cheated by going too many times, so we realized we could count the pieces that had been played. After that, Paolo was able to explain that he knew it was red’s turn, because there were 2 black pieces played and only 1 red piece (this kind of extrapolation is HUGE as an indicator of mathematical reasoning). Niki worked with her team using the ‘fair share’ language we’ve used with our sharing mats to make sure that each member of her team had the same number of pieces. Timo was sad because, since they decided to play boys v. girls and there were more boys, he explained he wouldn’t have as many pieces as the girls did! Each and every one of these statements are GIANT mathematical concepts that they came to themselves and understood in a fundamental way, simply because they used in a setting they understood and cared about. These activities are not just games for them, they are incredibly intricate and powerful ways for them to learn mathematics!

On Friday, some of our parents were able to come in and experience a day in the life of the students. I didn’t get as many pics as I would have liked, but it was still a blast.

The block station was open and Todd and Roman were determined to beat our bridge record! Todd explained how his bridge was held up by the broad end of the blocks, while Roman was using the narrow end; he thought that might change how much the bridge would hold up. After they made a successful bridge, Mr. Chris challenged them to see how FEW blocks they could use to make a bridge. Roman used 2 blocks to make a bridge, which was super exciting. I don’t have a picture of it, but that is for the best; can you figure out how he did it? We had a great time seeing how friction and weight affected our structures!

We painted pictures using pipe cleaners, and we had a blast figuring out stamps to make. Kasia used the smiley face stamp and thought about how she could make the stamp show different faces by bending the pipe cleaner. Vash really liked using the same stamp with different colors of paint to see how the shapes compared and how the paint colors blended. Ludmilla used her pipe cleaners to make letters and thought about how she could use a pipe cleaner to make a handle for the stamp. It is super important for us to recognize how its not the shape of the pipe cleaner itself, but the part that actually touches the paper that matters when making a stamp! It was a blast painting and seeing how we can make our own stamps and blended colors. If you want to practice this at home, an activity we are doing this week is making our own stamps out of this clay, letting it dry, and then using the stamps. Give it a shot at home and see what they create!

At the water table, we had to figure out which container would hold more water, but Mr. Chris was especially tough today. It wasn’t enough to find out which held more, they needed to prove it in different ways. George and Filisa worked and found 4 different ways to prove it! They proved it by measuring how many spoons it would take, how many scoops it would take to fill it up, poured the water from one into the other and seeing if there was room left over, and read the label to see which held more! I was thrilled to see the different ways they used the tools and prior knowledge they had to defend their answer. It is super important for the children to have experience finding multiple ways to show their work and using evidence to support their answer! This is a great practice to start with your child; have them give multiple reasons for their answer (Why should we have ice cream for dessert? It’s the favorite dessert for 3 of us AND it’s cheaper than a cake.)

Finally, we read the first chapter of the BFG and made chapter pictures to represent what we saw in our heads. Rick wanted to highlight Sophie’s glasses on the bedside table beside her, while Filisa loved the description of the crooked houses Sophie saw and wanted to show what she thought that would look like. We did a great job remembering important scenes from a story and showing how we think they would look!

Today was a great way to wrap up our week! We celebrated Gia’s birthday and got ready for curriculum night. I hope to see all of you in a few hours.

Our reading from the BFG was pretty exciting. Anja predicted that the giant would take Sophie back home since he was a nice giant, and Tove thought Sophie was going to eat the Giant! Instead, the BFG (and Timo explained to us that the book must be named after him) showed Sophie all the other giants that wanted to eat her. Sophie wanted the BFG to stop the other giants, but we don’t know how they could even do that.

Our sharing time went a bit deeper today and it was incredibly exciting. Today, before they began, I wrote on the board that they were going to share 3 animal crackers, 2 chocolate teddies, and 1 honey teddy in groups of three. Paolo realized that he would have to break apart the honey teddy, since there was only one teddy and 3 of them. Timo predicted that he wouldn’t have to break the animal crackers, as they would each get one. However, when we broke into groups, there was some struggles. When Jerome and Yianni finished their sharing and saw that their neighbors were having trouble, they volunteered to help; they realized that one person didn’t like the cookies broken apart, even though they thought it was the same amount, so they suggested switching. Everyone now agreed it was a fair share and thanked Jerome and Yianni for their help. Next week will start the wrap up of this unit, so we will move into objects that resist division and attempt to understand remainders and might even sneak in a little multiplication, if Mr. Chris can manage it :). If you want to practice this at home, challenge your child by asking them to fix a share that ISN’T fair. How can they move the objects to make it fair, do they realize which group they need to take it away from?

In our painting time, we used styrofoam peanuts to paint. Almost everyone loved using the foam, as it was squishy, held a lot of paint, and blended the colors really well. Rebecca was very proud of the pink and green she managed to blend on her painting. Bisola recognized that, if we wanted a darker pink, we would need to add more of the red, not the white. Anja used her painting time to make flowers, while Timo painted an obstacle course and enjoyed telling us all the parts of it. Teddy thought differently and used the paint as glue and the styrofoam to represent his classmates; he made a whole classroom of kids!

Our body exploration continued investigating eyes. Another of the questions the class posed was why do we blink. To investigate this, we broke into pairs and had staring contests. We then talked about how it felt to keep our eyes open that long. Yianni complained that keeping his eyes open made his eyes feel dry, which helped Niki realize that blinking helps keep our eyes wet! Then we pretended our magnifying glasses were our eyes and investigated the classroom. However, when we simulated a little dust by sprinkling flour on the lens, Gia noticed that the dust made it harder for her to see through them. Everyone agreed that it was a problem, so we used some baby wipes to clean the lenses. Once we started talking about what it would be like if we got dust on our eyes, Sokrates realized that blinking is how we wipe our eyes off. Paolo wrapped it all up by comparing blinking to the windshield wipers on a car, and I can’t think of a better analogy than that. If you want to reinforce this idea, have a conversation with them while you’re in the car, where they blink as you use the wipers to clean the windshield. I was thrilled with the conversations we had and can’t wait to dive even deeper next week!

 

Our day was full of lots of little pieces, but we still learned a lot! Today was the day we had to Read for the Record, as part of a national program to see how many children can read the same book on one day. We read Quackers by Liz Wong, which was pretty fun. As part of our project, we drew pictures of our favorite parts and wrote up ‘blurbs’ to talk about the parts we liked. Anja loved reading about Quackers and his friend Mittens, while Tove thought it was funny that Quackers was a duck that didn’t like to get wet! We certainly had fun taking part in Reading for the Record!

We also spent more time getting ready to build our amusement parks with Ms. Dionysia’s class. Today we finished making our groups and had a few minutes to build something that would be in our amusement park but WASN’T a ride. Paolo was part of Team Cornflakes and built a grabber arm for a Toy Game. Teddy was part of Team Amazing Unicorns and he built a motorcycle parking lot. Jerome was part of Team Saluters and built a robot to help around the park. Niki, as a member of Team Unicorns and Dragons made a lemonade stand! We can’t wait to start building together as part of our team.

In sharing time, we had to split the cookies between three people. Jerome knew his group wasn’t fair, because he saw that Yianni had 2 chocolate pieces when everyone else had just one. Yianni responded that they could put one of his pieces back in the bag, and everyone agreed that was fair. Rebecca said that even though she only had 8 pieces and everyone else had 9, her pieces were bigger, so it was still fair. Sokrates thought it was fair that each of them got 2 pieces. Timo wasn’t sure, but after everyone agreed that it was okay if they had different kinds of cookies, he agreed it was a fair share.

In our read aloud, we had a lot of different predictions about what would happen to Sophie. Gia predicted Sophie would be scared, Bisola predicted she was going to get eaten, and Tove thought she was going to get out. Instead, Sophie found out that the giant was actually a Big Friendly Giant, which was super reassuring for her. He explained the other giants might be mean, but he wasn’t. We’re all pretty relieved, but now we’re nervous about all those other mean giants.

We also had someone from First Midwest Bank come in and talk to the kids about the savings accounts they can make and how important it is to save money. You can expect an email about this and there will be a representative from the bank here tomorrow in case you want to sign up or have any questions. Speaking of, I can’t wait to see you tomorrow!