Our ambitious, ‘Fill the room with goldfish crackers’ project has begun! Thankfully, Paolo pointed out that 1,000’s of loose crackers might bring bugs to our classroom and Anja agreed it would be messy, so we’re counting them into baggies. We also made predictions about how many we thought it would take, with guesses ranging from 100 to 1 billion. Tove thought about saying infinity, but we talked about how infinite goldfish would mean that you could always put in more goldfish, so that’s not quite right. Niki pointed out that no one guessed it would take just one goldfish, which was a good thing. We counted out baggies of 100 goldfish and Teddy explained that, since we had 5 bags, we would have 500 goldfish, as cool bit of counting on his part. We’re up to 1,000 goldfish, as you can see in the pictures. I also got predictions from the teachers, so if you’d like to send in your predictions, send a note or message me.
Our voting changed a bit today too. Instead of making a bar graph, we made a pictograph, where votes were represented by pictures. But, to make things tricky, each child only got half of a face, as Bisola pointed out. We voted on who was the worst villain so far, Roscuro the rat, the Green Death dragon, or Fleshlumpeater the giant. Teddy voted for Roscuro and explained that Roscuro was bad at being a bad guy, since he changed his mind and was nice at the end. Anja thought Fleshlumpeater was the worst, since he was always bad. Sokrates thought the Green Death was the worst, since he was the biggest. As they filled it out, Timo pointed out to Anja that she completed his face vote. Paolo realized he had to flip his card the other way, that way it would match up correctly. Gia and Bisola found out they were both voting for the giant, so they drew together so the pictures would match. After we finished voting, we discussed how some villains only had half a face (even though they had one vote) and how a villain that had 4 angry faces received 8 votes. Pictographs are super challenging, so I’m impressed with the reasoning they showed today.
Our trip to the library was quite fun. The students received a compliment on their last trip for being great readers and for being respectful, so they were able to play on some of the library’s learning center toys, which everyone was excited about. As we were there, Tove volunteered to pick out a book for Rebecca, since she wasn’t there; Tove said she had the book at home and knew Rebecca would like it. Jerome picked out for Yianni and explained that Yianni would like the gold and jewels he saw in the book (the way Yianni read it when we got book showed that Jerome knew his audience). Bisola liked checking out the same book as Anja, that way they could read together. When I pointed out how the front issue of a magazine is the newest issue, Paolo liked reading the newest issues of different magazines. Teddy saw everyone else asking for the title of their books and came up and told me the title of his book, explaining that he had read it at home and knew the title already. I was super proud of the class for being so considerate and prioritizing their reading.
In the read-aloud today, the title was “A Meeting”, which Yianni explained as where people get together to talk, like our morning meetings. At the animals’ meeting, they discussed which word should be in Charlotte’s web next, and they had to convince Templeton to help. Paolo explained that Templeton only agreed to help because he eats Wilbur’s food and won’t get to eat if Wilbur is killed. It was a short chapter today, but we spent enough time on our counting activity that it worked out for the best.
Quick housekeeping announcements. As you saw in the parent notes, strep is in our classroom. We are being diligent at school about washing our hands and keeping our areas clean, so please do your part by keeping your child home when they’re ill and keeping the school informed. We’re also getting into School Choice Week, so make sure to either send that scarf in or let the office know if it is missing. Have a great night and be well!
