November 23rd, 2009

Blog Managers' Post:
"Today we had rest time. We read books and rested. We get to blog now and be line leaders. We get to be chair pusher-iners. Fingerpainting was good. We made our own bookmarks. We made animals of leaves with our big buddies. I made a deer. We writed a note for Ms. Laurel in the writing center." -Sam M.

"I made a mouse with my big buddy." -Patrick

Today, we picked our jobs for the week with our new job chart. Some of the jobs remained the same (door holder, bell ringer, etc.) but we also got new jobs to try out. We can now choose chair pusher, clean up manager, line leader and blog manager!





We started our bread unit today! To kick off our learning, we completed a KWL chart on bread. A KWL chart is a chart in which we list everything we Know about bread and What we want to know about bread. At the end of the unit, we will revisit the chart and list all we have Learned about bread.





Here are some examples of things we know about bread:
1. Bread is sometimes brown, and sometimes white.
2. Some bread has seeds and some doesn't.
3. Tortillas are a type of bread.
4. We sometimes share bread.
5. Some bread is soft and some bread it hard.

Here are some ideas we want to discover about bread:
1. Why are there different types of bread?
2. What is bread made of?
3. How do you make bread?
4. Is there a type of bread with grapes in it?

We are readers in the dolphin classroom. We read books all day, everyday, and real readers often find they need bookmarks to mark their places in books they have not finished. Today, we used fall colors to try out our finger paints on pieces of paper we will later use as bookmarks.

We used sponges, too, to create different textures.

On Wednesday, we will finish our bookmarks by writing down one thing we are thankful for on our bookmarks and then laminating them so they will last a long time.

We also were visited by our buddies today. We read a book ("Leaf Man") about using the shapes of various leaves to make larger shapes in the form of animals. With our buddies we planned out animals we could build out of different leaf shapes. Today, we followed our plans to actually create our shapes out of pressed leaves.

"Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert

Bethany's plan.

Bethany's creation.

Everett's snake.

Sam's deer.

Friday - November 13th, 2009

We are beginning to slowly wrap up our study of fall, leaves and the forest.

Today, we used guided imagery to imagine ourselves as small seedlings buried in the ground. We pushed through the ground to become small saplings.




When we moved into the world, we felt the sun on our faces and felt the cool air.


As the seasons changed, so did we! We grew stronger and stronger and eventually grew apples on our branches.

Along came some children. The children picked our apples and enjoyed the fruit. When that happened, we felt happy, because we knew that we would one day grow fruit again.

We had music with Ms. Shelley. We sang fall songs and pretended to be squirrels, scampering and gathering our nuts to nibble on.


We also explored the sounds that leaves make when they fall, and animals sounds that one might hear in a forest!




We also got to use special musical instruments (shakers).

In Creative Play, we put the tissue paper leaves we had made last Thursday on our forest trees. The trees are looking full now, and provide protection, shade and a home for us as we pretended to be squirrels and other forest creatures. We also made a birthday card for Orion.

In Atelier, we practiced our fine motor skills and further studied the shapes of leaves and what trees they represented by sewing burlap leaves with large needles and yarn.

We learned to thread our needles....

and make small stitches, pulling the thread all the way through.


We went up and down with our needles.

After rest time, we took the real leaves we sorted on Tuesday and organized them into a pictograph. We made observations such as how many leaves we had all together, how many more fir branches we had than maple leaves, if any amount was equal to another amount etc. We talked about the concepts of more than and less than, as well as discussed what the amount of leaves in our graph could tell us about how common certain trees are in our community.




We also celebrated Orion's birthday and had a dance party!

November 12th, 2009

We are beginning to slowly wrap up our study of fall, leaves and the forest.

Today, we used guided imagery to imagine ourselves as small seedlings buried in the ground. We pushed through the ground to become small saplings. Some of the trees thought pushing up through the ground was difficult, because the ground they were planted in was frozen, and some of us found it easy to sprout, as the ground they were planted in had been muddied and softened by rain. "It felt good under ground. It was funner. I could feel the dirt. It was easy (to come out of the ground) because it was muddy and the snow was on it for a long time and there were a whole lot of animals. The animals helped me dig out of the hole." -Jacob



When we moved into the world, we felt the sun on our faces and felt the cool air.



As the seasons changed, so did we! We grew stronger and stronger and eventually grew apples on our branches.


Along came some children. The children picked our apples and enjoyed the fruit. When that happened, we felt happy, because we knew that we would one day grow fruit again.

"It felt dangerous for me underground, it didn't feel good for me. I was going to die. The ground was so sticky for me because it was covered with mud. Then I scrubbed the mud off and I stretched out more. Then I dumped the apples. My arms was hurting. When the kids picked the apples it felt good. My arms were starting to break. Then I was feeling much better." -Lhitzy

In Creative Play, we put the tissue paper leaves we had made last Thursday on our forest trees. The trees are looking full now, and provide protection, shade and a home for us as we pretended to be squirrels and other forest creatures.


In Atelier, we practiced our fine motor skills and further studied the shapes of leaves and what trees they represented by sewing burlap leaves with large needles and yarn. Every child was able to identify maple, oak and poplar leaves just by their shape!

We learned to thread our needles....

and make small stitches, pulling the thread all the way through.

We went up and down with our needles.

Here is Iris sharing what sewing means to her:

After rest time, we took the real leaves we sorted on Tuesday and organized them into a pictograph. We made observations such as how many leaves we had all together, how many more fir branches we had than maple leaves, if any amount was equal to another amount etc. We talked about the concepts of more than and less than, as well as discussed what the amount of leaves in our graph could tell us about how common certain trees are in our community.



Some of us were wondering earlier about alligators and crocodiles. Jacob hypothesized that alligators never ate people, but crocodiles did. We decided to research that hypothesis on Google. We thought of a question ("Do alligators eat people?"), and used the internet to find the answer.


We found out that while alligators do eat people once in a while, they are less aggressive than crocodiles and won't eat people unless provoked. Crocodiles are more likely to eat larger mammals, such as people. We were surprised that our hypothesis wasn't entirely correct!