This Week in Review - January 14 - 17

                                This information is also found in Walter's weekly email:

On Monday, as promised, we finished our button constellations. These turned out very sweet! Grace and I will make a sort of art installation using all of the children’s name constellations for a 1^st/2^nd grade galaxy. This shows one child's name constellation on a grid with stars, and then on felt with buttons. She is very proud of how beautiful her name looks, as she should be! It looks sort of like a dove, doesn't it?

The combined classes also got together on Thursday to do more project work surrounding magic and mythology. This time, inspired by the Steig story The Amazing Bone, we walked to the playground to find an object that may contain a bit of magic. Each child got their picture taken with their object and will write about it later. Here is a child transforming as we speak, with the help of her magic rock!

In science, we are continuing to learn more about the actual science of stars. This week, we are learning about their life cycle. It is a nice juxtaposition to learn science alongside of mythology about the same thing – I think the children really appreciate knowing both.

Math continues to be all about the array. We finished our array city, and it is a colorful and beautiful thing to behold! Now we have filled in a multiplication table, and are practicing our facts by various games and activities. This week (and next) partners a playing a game called Close to 100. This is great practice building arrays, writing multiplication sentences, working cooperatively, and using skill and logic.

Our room looks a bit brighter now with the addition of our winter wear self portraits! They really add a lot of color and loveliness to otherwise dull weather days. Next, we hope to make lots of snowflakes to adorn frames – I just need to find large pieces of cardboard like what was used for the fall frames (The Scrap Box has been letting me down!)  Until then, they are simply matted on plain white cardstock – please feel free to check them out. We are also writing winter acrostic poems, but these are still being workshopped.

Of course, with Martin Luther King Day approaching, we have been learning and reading a lot about this great hero. Sylwia, our librarian, read We Shall Overcome on Monday during library time, and I’ve read several other books throughout the week. 

We’ve talked about how we can be peaceful and cooperative in our play at school, to make MLK proud, and ourselves proud, too. The first and second graders also did a bit of service to the school by cleaning up our playground.