Under the African Sky - Another Wild Swan Success

We love going to the performances at Wild Swan. We usually go several times a year. On Friday, we went to Under the African Sky, and the children really adored this one. It was a collection of three African tales, complete with storytelling, costumes, and drumming. We sang and danced along with the actors.

After the performance, we got a chance to chat with a few of the actors. Several of the children in my class go to an after school acting program at the Wild Swan studio, or have been in past summer camps there. We feel completely at home there, and are so lucky to have such a great resource in our town.

We will be going to two more performances this year - Strega Nona in March and Cricket in Times Square in May. Stay tuned for details!

February Events

It is hard to believe that February is right around the corner. February means several things to us, including the 100th day of school, Valentine's Day, and mid-winter break. It also means the start of a new monthly theme - this time it will be Migrations. And, of course, a couple of special field trips. Here is an event calendar to keep us all on track:

Friday, February 3   Field trip to the Map Library at U of M. Tim will have some special maps that document human and animal migration for us to explore. Many thanks to Ella's mom, Amy, for setting this up.

Tuesday, February 14  Valentine's Day. We celebrate simply in our room. The children will have decorated their boxes beforehand as a class project. On the 14th, please bring in a valentine for each child in our class. I have already emailed all of the names. No food items please, but of course little gifts are fine. We will also have a special (fruit) snack.

Wednesday, February 15  100th Day of School. We will have some special stories and activities.

Friday, February 17   Sweet Honey in the Rock concert

Friday, February 17   Skating Party at Buhr Park (details soon)

Monday, February 20 - Friday, February 24   MID-WINTER BREAK

Monday, February 27  Back to school

Special Readers for February

Mark your calendars! Here is the special reader list for February:

Thursday, February 2: Eli and Ben

Thursday, February 9: Ella and Juna

Thursday, February 16: Oliver  and Elliot

The Continents - Mapping with Playdough

We did a lovely project this afternoon with our K Buddies. We made a map of the continents of Earth using playdough. The results were quite beautiful, and - better yet - made learning the names of the continents, what a continent is, and where they are in relation to each other, much more fun and memorable.

Making the playdough yesterday - fun and messy.

We made the playdough yesterday during a Tribes activity. Each tribal family had to work together to make the dough nice and soft - but not too sticky. Then they had to figure a way to color the playdough that would please everyone.

After the playdough was made, we spend some time practicing making and naming the continents. We had to make sure we would be ready to be the teachers when our K Buddies came to visit.




This afternoon, the children were paired up (or in some cases worked in 3s or alone, depending), and tried to represent to seven continents as accurately as possible. Once the continents were formed and placed on blue "ocean" paper, children cut out pieces of paper with each continent name and put the labels where they belonged. Students took turns closing their eyes while their partner mixed up the labels - then were challenged to place the slips of paper where they belonged.

Elliot and his little buddy Folu work on their playdough map together.

The dynamic trio of Ben, Ava, and Ollie always work well as a team.

Beautiful Maddy and her continent map - so proud of the results!

This is just one example - lovely! The children added great detail.

Multiplication Stories

For the past couple weeks, we've been focused on multiplication in my math group. There are several great introductory books, including Each Orange Has 8 Slices and Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream. These books emphasize what multiplication actually MEANS. It is not enough that children memorize facts if they are not really clear on what is happening.

We spent some time brainstorming on "things that come in groups". For instance, shoes in a pair, people's eyes, slices of bread on a sandwich all come in 2s. We also learned that multiplication is a faster way to count, but that the groups we are counting need to be equal.

Now, we are ready to make a book. I told the kids that this will be a long project, but once we "publish" it, it will help future groups of beginning multipliers. Starting with the 2s times table, we are illustrating the equation, writing the numbers, and adding words. Here are just a couple of examples from today:

Our Raptor Visits!

We had a special surprise this afternoon! We knew that a raptor would be visiting us, but we didn't know it would be "our" raptor! The Leslie Science and Nature Center had told us that the new screech owl would not be ready for travel - he was still quite new and not so used to people. However, we got to be one of his first visits, and he was as cute as we could have imagined.

The LSNC people think this little guy was hit by a car, but they can't be sure. His wing is hurt, and he can't fly. But thanks to the children in our classroom and the bake sale they had, we can pay for his food, medicine, and all other requirements for a full year.

Updated Snack Provider List

January 23 - 27         Hume Clark

Jan 30 - Feb 3          Matzger

February 6 - 10         Kulper

February 13 - 17        Maynard

Feb 27 - March 2        Pritts

March 5 - 9             Levin

March 12 - 16           Miller

March 19 - 23           Pui

March 26 - 30           Stuckey

April 9 - 13            Applegate

April 16 - 20           Davies

April 23 - 27           Godwin 

From Home to School - Our Big Mapping Project

What an ambitious project! We were successful in making our big map this morning that shows everyone's route to school. The students are experts now on how to draw a compass rose, and all seem comfortable with directions (Never Eat Soggy Waffles!) We also had to agree on symbols and what should be included in our key.

Some kids live right in the neighborhood, and some live very far away. But we all love to come to school! (As a sweet aside, one child mistakenly called me "Mama" today. It happens all the time. The student was a bit embarrassed until another child said, "Oh, we all do it. And it does make sense, because we are like a family.")

Here are great examples of just a few of the maps we saw today:

Making "Old" Treasure Maps with our K-1 Buddies

This afternoon, Val's class and my class got together as usual for K-1 Buddy time. We read a story called Treasure Map (really a math story about reading maps), and then Val showed us a clever trick to make paper look like the old map in the story. Children drew their treasure map, tore the edges, and crumpled the paper up. After that they soaked it in coffee water. We are all very pleased with the results!

the demonstration

drawing our treasure maps

a dunk in the secret aging solution

success!

County Farm Park, Faye, and Maps

Last Friday we got a very lucky break - snow! This made our winter nature walk with naturalist Faye Stoner much more meaningful. We saw lots of little animal tracks in the fresh snow. I asked Faye to encompass maps with our winter walk, so after looking at different trail maps, the children decided on a destination. The children used their maps, posted signs, their knowledge of cardinal directions, the sun, and Faye's compass and worked together to try to get us to their selected spot. Success!