March 11, 2010

Ms. Laurel is back today. She will be with us full time from now on. We are so excited she is back! Ms. Katie's final day is Friday the 19th.

We had a math graph today.



Ms. Laurel ran a special ladybug math center. We roll a dice, and then put an equal number of spots on a ladybug as dots on the dice. This helps us with our number sense and one-to-one counting skills.



Justin showed us the x-ray of his broken arm. We learned that an x-ray is a big camera that can see inside your body. It was fascinating to see Justin's bone INSIDE his body and connect that to the insect exoskeleton we have been learning about. Justin will soon have a hard cast on that will act just like an exoskeleton to protect his arm!


We became acquainted with our new stick bug friend. We took a vote to decide on the name and we voted on Spiderman.


We held Spiderman, felt his exoskeleton, counted his legs (6) and observed his eyes. We were fascinated by his amazing camouflage.

Naomi's mom visited today and helped us play with our walking sticks!

Some of us drew pictures of Spiderman and other insects.




In atelier Tuesday and today, we played with noodles in the sensory table. We honed our fine motor skills as we used tweezers to pick up individual noodles and our math observational skills as we compared the lengths of the noodles.



We also explored in a new insect terrarium. At first, we couldn't see any insects. Some of us thought the bugs were so well camouflaged that we couldn't find them. Other Entomologists thought they were hiding under the wood and soil. As we dug, we found worms, pill bugs, slugs and ants. We studied each insect. Only the ants were insects, the rest were bugs.



In atelier, we started labeling some big bug posters we made. We labeled "Beetle" and all of the beetle's body parts. We write the sounds we hear and use our alphabet sheets to remind us of how to write our letters.



This afternoon we practiced our writing on the whiteboards.





Remember: Conferences are next week!

March 3rd, 2010

Today was a very busy day as we started our first official week of learning about insects.

In the Atelier we studied pictures of ladybugs and painted our own ladybugs using finger paints.




We also played with fake insects in the moon sand. We made insect tracks and burrowed our insects in the moon sand.



Yesterday, some of our friends traced big pictures of bugs on sheets of paper and painted them. Today, we helped cut out the pictures and re-paste them to new pieces of paper. We will trace our own bugs later in the week!



During afternoon centers, we looked at pictures of insects. We discussed what we observed about insects with buddies. We noticed that all insects have six legs. We cut out pictures of insects displaying their legs and pasted them to a sheet of paper that says, "Insects have 6 legs."




We also used new 3D insect puzzles with very small pieces. Because the insect pieces are easy to lose, we voted and decided that only 3 people could play with the 3D insect puzzles at a time.

We asked our friends for help finding the small pieces. This center took so much of patience and persistence!

Luckily, we also have 3D bug models to sort and observe!

We also had new compound eye lenses to use. We noticed that bugs see very differently than we do. They can see multiple images at one time, and movement is magnified through the insect lenses.

This is how a bug would see Everett!

Some of wrote very long stories. Here is Nate reading his story.

March 1st, 2010

Today was Dr. Seuss Day! Our big buddies came to help us circulate through Seuss-themed centers all morning!

We ate green eggs and ham and decorated and cut out Cat in The Hat top hats!









We read Dr. Seuss books with our buddies!



We played Seuss themed games!



We followed a recipe for Oobleck and made scientific observations about the crazy substance!

Oobleck sometimes felt dry, sometimes felt wet!

Ms. Rachelle read Bartholomew and the Oobleck to us while we made Oobleck!

After lunch and recess, we watched Horton Hears a Who with our whole community! We enjoyed the whole movie, which is a rare treat!


We also began our insect unit. We brainstormed questions we had about insects! As we become expert entomologists, we will add questions to this list and research answers throughout the unit.

This activity was a good opportunity to talk about what a question was and how to phrase it. We also learned how to add a question mark to the end of sentences.

Conferences are coming soon! Please sign up at the front desk for your time slot!