La Lectura

This week we read two books; “El principe solitario” (The lonely prince) and “No necesito amigos” (I don’t need friends). Both books talk about friendship and show the children the different feelings that the characters are experiencing, such as being happy and sad.

The children focused on using the words from the both books. The students found rhyming words related to the friendship concepts.

Amigos-Caminos

Triste-Chiste

Feliz-Lombriz

jugar-Ganar

We discussed how each word is related to friendship and concluded the lesson by emphasizing rhyming words  with games. These games always lead them to learn new words.

 The children need a lot of practice reading in order to build fluency, so we continued practicing “Palabras con a” (Words with a). For these activities we used cards, chant, and story books containing many words with syllables with “a”. We also practiced letter strokes,  both in their notebooks and on the whiteboard.

The two words of this week were: “ veo” (I see) and “más” (more). It is amazing to see how the children strive to give ideas in Spanish to make their sentences. This is a very good activity where they begin to think in Spanish. Every time they say a word or sentence in Spanish the students get tallies, which accumulate until they reach a hundred. Once they have reached 1,000 tallies they get a “Piñata” as a prize. They made it this week!

This week was also Halloween and the children took turns talking about their costumes, using their Spanish vocabulary. It was a really nice experience to watch the little ones work hard to use their Spanish knowledge.

The craft of the week was to make a nice bat where they had to use their fine motor skills and follow multi-step directions.

 

Las matemáticas

The children continue to practice their counting and learned numbers from 39 to 43. We continue with the routine lessons to identify if a number is even or odd. We also practice identifying how many tens and ones each number has. They  practice the strokes and quantity for those numbers. Children practiced counting by saying out loud the numbers counting 5 by 5 and 10 by 10.

The little ones did a great job practicing their sum abilities with dominoes and tallies.

Science

This week we had fun with some pumpkin activities and spooky ghost experiments during our Halloween rotation party.  On Monday we had health with Ms. Bree, our lesson was on Nutrition.  The class also finished their barn writing book.  On Friday we began our next science domain: The Five Senses. A big thanks to Cassie and Jennie for your help in class during the Halloween activities, we couldn’t have done it without you!

Our weekly objectives were to:

• identify the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch
• identify each of the body parts associated with the five senses
• describe how the five senses help humans stay safe and learn about their world

History & Geography

This week in our Native American unit we finished our parfleche and began to learn about the Wampanoag.  We read a story called “Bear, Gull, and Crow”, which also fit in nicely with our new science domain.

Our weekly objectives were to:
• identify the environment in which the Wampanoag lived
• understand how the Wampanoag tribe lived
• identify the Wampanoag as a settled tribe
• describe the food, clothing, and shelter the Wampanoag

English Sight Words of the Week

Specialists

Art with Ms. Kelly

We’ve had a fun and busy month creating art!

Apple Paintings

•  Observe shape, color and texture of real apples
• Learn about our state’s apple orchards
• Draw and paint 3 life-size apples on a table
• Use only blue and yellow to create green
• Listen to Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni

Owl Drawings

• Look at photos of real owls
• Observe eyes and feathers
• Follow a Guided Drawing of Owls
• Add your own color designs
• Drawing and Painting pumpkins
• Observe lines and shapes of real pumpkins

Draw a large pumpkin with ridges

• Mix yellow and red paint to create orange

The students’ creative owls and pumpkins have been on the bulletin board!

Line Experiments

• Listen to Lines that Wiggle by Carol Whitman
• Create a variety of lines using oil pastels, watercolors and markers.
• Add googlie eyes to your line drawing to make funny faces.

 

Music with Ms. Nadia

Wow, has it been two months already?! This month flew by as we learned that music can be a way to express feelings. Some songs are happy, and some songs are sad. Some songs are peaceful, and some songs are crazy! In learning about classical music, we focused on two songs by Edvard Grieg: Morningand In the Hall of the Mountain King. Both songs were composed for a play (Peer Gynt) about a man who goes on an adventure. Each week as we listened to the songs, we interacted with them in different ways, from drumming to dancing with sock puppets. This past week, we listened to a few different versions of In the Hall of the Mountain King, including piano, electronic, and rock. We also sang lyrics to the song as we reenacted trick-or-treating.

As it is flu season, our class bear cub Bartholomew got sick had to stay home for a few weeks. We wrote this song for him to feel better:

(to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle)

Bear cub, bear cub, get well soon

I would like to play with you

Here’s some soup and a card

Baby monkey for your yard

Bear cub, bear cub, get well soon

I would like to play with you!

 

We had fun writing songs together and read books about other songwriters, including the composer Mozart (Play, Mozart, Play!), a girl named Violet who was born to play music (Violet’s Music), and a cat (Kat Writes a Song). Truly, anyone can enjoy the wonderful world of music!