Puffins/Pre K

The children have been coloring pictures with oceanic focus to fore shadow an upcoming block. We continue to combine stories and crayon coloring to deepen the relationship between imagery and comprehension as well as training the hand for proper ‘pencil’ grip.

K/1

We used colored pencils and followed step by step instructions to color a detailed artistic rendering of a llama with traditional South American symbols and forms. The class is learning about South America and we will be integrating our art with this over the next several projects.

2/3

This class will be learning about seasons in ELA and so we explored a form drawing where a balanced figure eight holds two imbalanced figure eights in a visual composition that symbolizes the seasons in their characteristics and attributes based upon color and their respective balance/imbalance between the length of night in relation to day.

4/5

These students are learning about colonial America in Super Studies and are delving further to the methodical process of gridded mapmaking. After plotting the entire coastline on the eastern seaboard of colonial America.  We create a grid on drawing paper and work off of a pre-gridded copy of a map of colonial America. Rows are designated by letters and columns are designated by numbers—think of Battleship the game. This helps to strengthen executive functioning skills.

6/7/8

These students are reading “A Long Walk to Water“ in ELA.  We are reviewing the methodical process of gridded  mapmaking.This week we finished up all of the water features and jumped to the highest points and plotted the mountains of Africa. We create a grid on drawing paper and work off of a pre-gridded copy of a map of Africa. Rows are designated by letters and columns are designated by numbers—think of Battleship the game. This helps to strengthen executive functioning skills and most of the class are independently guiding themselves now that it is in the habit life.

On Forest Friday we read Under One Rock: Bugs, Slugs, and other ughs by Anthony D. Fredericks and illustrated by Jennifer DiRabbio, and then headed to the woods to gently move rocks and logs to observe the community of creatures living there. Two new vocabulary words introduced in the book were: community and habitat; we will continue to explore and discuss concepts of community and habitat this year. 

This week in kindergarten and first grade, we reviewed vowel sounds. We were introduced to each vowel as a superhero, who says their name (long vowel sound) but when they want to be in disguise, they say a different sound (short vowel sound). First graders focused on the word families of -an, -am, and -at (can, jam, mat). We incorporated a bit of basketball shooting in the classroom on a mini hoop to help with our review! In Kindergarten Math we have been exploring some Math tools such as connecting cubes, pattern blocks and two color counters and ten frames. We have doing writing in Math using Which One Doesn’t Belong and What Do You Notice and Wonder . We have been learning to talk about Math in different ways. in First Grade Math we have been working on counting and adding simple number sentences. We have also explored connecting cubes and learned some card games. We have also worked on writing in Math using Which  One Doesn’t Belong and What do You Notice and Wonder.  Both classes have been doing the calendar and weather everyday and counting the days in school using a Place Value Chart . For forest Friday, we went into the forest and did a scavenger hunt. Among the things that the students needed to find were: something tiny, something bouncy, a bird, a fence, something that started with the sound /f/ and so on. They had a great time. We have been writing about our day in the afternoon.

2/3 math