Today was bittersweet, to say the least. We read the last of our Encyclopedia Brown Mysteries, but it was a little different. Instead of a mystery with a solution, this was part of a contest, which means there’s no solution in the book. This mystery got everyone very engaged. When we were discussing the idiom ‘her face fell’, Niki explained it as the face you’d make after getting all your Halloween candy and realizing it’s raisins and candy corn, a pretty accurate explanation. Teddy was a little confused because, halfway through the story, there was a missing camera, but the title was the stolen jewels (it was revealed in the very next paragraph that the thief matched the description of a jewel thief, which made Anja exclaim that they were the same person, so it was the same case). Yianni realized that, when the thief took a briefcase inside a stranger’s house, he was going to hide the jewels and he was completely right. We’re still trying to sort out how Encyclopedia knew where the jewels were hidden, so wish us luck.
Our other big project for the day was creating warning posters for the Metra, whose tagline for the posters is “Use your senses”, which prompted Rebecca to start talking about them and how they would be used. We started by looking over past contest winners to see what they did that was so successful. Gia pointed out the clean colors they used, which inspired Max to use really bright colors on his poster. Tove thought that people should use their ears to hear the train coming, while Juniper drew big eyes on her poster to help prompt people to be on the lookout for trains. As they worked, they thought about what they would do if they won. Paolo explained that $250 is the second prize because it is bigger than the $100 third prize, which some people didn’t initially understand. Timo, on the other hand, debated if it was better to get the first place iPad or the cash, since he could use the cash to get whatever he wanted. A tough choice indeed.
There were a couple of stand-out things in the rest of the classroom today. First, Niki realized that, since she had used a red piece of plastic to see hidden pictures in a Barbie book before, she would be able to use a red magnetile to do the same thing, and she was right! Second, there have been a couple more games of Karate and Tag lately, so I wanted to let you know that we spent some of our open gym today talking about how to play safe. Research has shown that “Big Body Play” is important for children’s development, so we discussed how to do it safely and friendly, but I also know it can be a scary thing for parents that aren’t used to this. With that in mind, if you have any concerns or questions, feel free to reach out to me. Thanks for being engaged and thoughtful parents and guardians; I appreciate all of you.
Bonus, Halloween pictures only a day late!
