We are Thinkers...

Such a fun and busy week.  We started off at our Morning Meeting where Mrs. Karas (our IB Coordinator) let us know that as a school we would be paying careful attention to the attribute of Thinker of our Learner Profile.  This brought on great excitement in our kindergarten classes right away.  All week long we celebrated ways we were Thinkers, but also our Caring Explorers were quick to point out when they noticed their friends being Thinkers too.  Needless to say, a lot of Destination Tickets are in the globe just waiting to be chosen at Tuesday's meeting!

Our Unit of Inquiry on How We Express Ourselves (Central Idea-Celebrations allow us to explore and express our ideas, cultures and beliefs) has led us to a very interesting study on Matin Luther King Jr.. We were fascinated by his amazing life and are honored to celebrate all he stood for and did for our country!

Early in the week we were wondering which attributes of the Learner Profile best represented Martin Luther King Jr..  Throughout the week, after every lesson, we reflected on all the attributes and found examples.  By the end of the week, we found that he reflected every attribute!

The students cited examples to justify their thinking for each attribute and their thoughts were on displayed our poster.

Here Brooklyn used her journal to record her thinking,

"Martin Luther King Everyone can be great...open-minded"

*Amazing to see a 6 year old quote a book and add personal thought to it...such a Thinker!

Math:

We are continuing our work to break our numbers into pairs as we seek to understand how numbers are constructed.  This week we worked on the number 8.  The discussions and awe when we work through our lessons are thrilling to hear.  

 

 If you look closely, you will see how two students chose to express their thinking in Mandarin!  THINKERS FOR SURE!

A Fun Place for Inquiry:

California Academy of Sciences has provided a fun look into an African Penguin Habitat.  The live web cam allows us to watch the penguins above the ground and even underwater.  Needless to say this site has provided a wonderful opportunity of inquiry.   

Posted below is the link if you are interested in taking a look.  *They have provided an application for your tablet or smartphone on their site.

Live Penguin Camera

Explorer Spotlight:

Zaid, one of our remarkable Explorers from Mrs. Taylor's class, came to each kindergarten class and wrote the Arabic alphabet for us.  It was so interesting to see how we wrote right to left and how his book was set up the opposite books in written in English.  The characters were all so unique and interesting.  We are looking forward to more lessons from Zaid!

Celia, a true Communicator from Mrs. Snyder's class, wrote a book called Monkey on the Moon over her vacation and shared it with the class.   Not only was her book wonderful, she did a tremendous job engaging the class as she shared.

Mrs. Snyder's class was delighted to have another Mystery Reader on Friday.  Dr. Alexander, Ean's mom, came to share a family favorite book.  Dr. Alexander went to school with the author and even was mentioned with a thank for you for her contributions in the book.  

Upcoming Events:
January 30-Early Release Day and our 100th day of School!!
*We will be sending home an activity this week for your child to bring in on the 100th Day.  

Happy New Year!

It was great to be back at school after the snowy Winter Vacation.  Our Explorers had many stories to share and were actually very eager to get right back to work.  Typically, after the start of the new year, there is an explosion of skills with a kindergarten child and that was evident for certain this week.  Students were making all kinds of connections, reading more books than ever and were verbalizing their thinking in amazing ways.  Needless to say, it was a super week!




Reading:

We can imagine you are enjoying listening to your child read every day.  Whether it is a book from their shelf, a magazine, a sign that they see or a letter that they received, they are reading!  We continue to address the importance of knowing their sight words, sounding out words (words with blends and silent e can be tricky, but we are working on them) and using clues from the story to help us uncover some of the more challenging words.  Taking picture walks prior to reading also helps get our minds ready for the story or information.  We love to generate questions about what we wonder might be in the book and check to see if our wonders were correct or answered as we read.  Readers are THINKERS and are engaged every step of the way.

Playing a reading game in small groups

We love to read!

Reading, Reading, Reading!

Using the Word Wizard app to work on sight words!

Math:
As we continue our understanding of numbers, we are spending a lot of our time decomposing numbers.  That sounds pretty challenging right?  It means that numbers can be broken up in a variety of ways.  Understanding this concept is necessary to truly grasp addition and subtraction in its more traditional sense.

Here we broke the number 10 up in three different parts:

Here is our Shake and Spill Game using the number seven.  It is fun to see all the combinations we can create that will make the number 7 using two sided counters (red/white).

Working on numbers 10-20 using place value.  (1 group of ten and how many ones left over create the number).  One Explorer's eyes lit up and said, "Oh this is magic!"

The Marble Math app is a favorite. Here a child is  sequencing ordinal numbers from first to last.

Writing:

We are always writing!  We know good writers work hard to express their thoughts in a clear way that others can read.  We are working conveying our many thoughts and writing conventions as well (capitalization, punctuation and finger spacing). 

Here a student chose to journal the colors in Mandarin!  

WIth all our snowy weather over vacation, it has been fun to use our imagination and write about what it would be like if we lived in a snow globe.  Oh the creativity!

Our Unit of Inquiry:

We have been working on How We Express Ourselves and we look closely at how celebrations are a way we can express our ideas and beliefs.  We have spent our time looking at various winter holidays and discovering what they are all about (who celebrates them, what they mean, why they are celebrated, when they occur).  Through our inquiry we are found many ways the holidays are similar as well.  Gaining this understanding helps our Explorers have an appreciation and understanding of others with an open-mind.

Each class has been creating a mind-map as a way to document understanding in the classroom. This of course cannot go home to be shared, but we thought you might like to see what one looks like if it has been brought up at home.

As we learn about each holiday that students are asked to reflect back on the information and record their knowledge on a post-it note for classroom display.  

Here are a few of our other activities too:

Recorded information learned after reading a non-fiction story on the holiday

 Latkes, Latke, Latkes (Thanks for cooking them Ms. Wighman!)

St. Lucia Day Fun!

We love our Mystery Readers!

*Sorry it is so dark!  Rafe's mom shared a wonderful book about how  wonderful it is to be an individual and expressing your unique self!  

Ms. Humphrey's mom surprised her class right before vacation and came to read! 

If you haven't signed up in your child's class, we still have spaces available!  Just let your child's teacher know. We'd love to have you!!

Upcoming Events:

January 18-Field Trip to Playhouse Square to see "Guess How Much I Love You!"

UPDATE-Mrs. Snyder and Ms. Wightman's homework packet had some printing issues.  These issues will be corrected and sent home on Monday.  So sorry!!