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!!

Unit of Inquiry Wrap-up

We spent this week wrapping up our Unit of Inquiry of Where We Are in Place and Time.  An inquiry into homes and journeys and the environmental impacts was so interesting!  

The icing on the cake was truly the Home Exhibition and the amazing home projects that began arriving early in the week.  The children and families all did an absolutely tremendous job creating their homes.  The details were remarkable and you can sure tell the ownership and pride each student has in their finished project.  Thank you for ALL your help!

A big thank you as well to all the parents that volunteered on the day of the Home Exhibition.  You surely helped make it a day filled with wonderful memories!

Here is a photo journey for your viewing pleasure:

As we enjoyed our Exhibition, we also spent a great deal of time reflecting back on all we have learned through the unit.  Here are a few samples:

 Pre/Post home assessments: 

After completing out Post assessment on drawing and labeling the parts of their home, our Explorers were really excited to look at their pre-assessment and see how different the two look.

The students worked in groups to reflect what they had learned about various environments and how the shelter, transportation and needs are impacted.  

Operation Hope Totes was a great success!  Thank you for all your help making sure families have their needs met from the City Mission.

Eco Explorers from the Cleveland Metroparks came for a visit.  It was very interesting to see all the mammals that live right in our area.  We had a great time guessing which fur belonged to each animal.

Our new Mandarin Schedule began this week too (wow-a lot happened in the course of 5 days!).  We now have Mandarin every day.  We LOVE it! We welcomed Zhou Laoshi.











Upcoming Events:
12/5-Wednesday is an Early Release Day.  
                      1:30 Dismissal
12/12- Field Trip to the Art Museum 
12/18- Holiday Shop begins (runs through 12/20)
12/19- Winter Concert 6:30pm @ Waetjen Hall

 Happy Thanksgiving!

We are not entirely certain where November has gone, and how it could possibly be Thanksgiving, but when we take these opportunities to reflect we see just how much we have accomplished!

We sure enjoyed making our Thanksgiving cards in Mandarin and have even taken virtual field trips to Plymouth, Massachusetts to learn about the journey the Pilgrims embarked on coming to this new land.  If you would like to take a virtual trip to Massachusetts with your family just click on the link below:

Thanksgiving Virtual Field Trip

Our study of homes and journeys has lead us to learn so much about the shelters the Pilgrims needed and how they constructed them with such little resources.

 
To help us with our inquiry on how/why homes and shelters are created Mr. Taylor came to share his journeys with us as a soldier with the Air National Guard.  We learned so much about the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and the work that is being done on the East Coast and elsewhere around the world.  The shelters they have constructed are fascinating!  Thanks for coming Mr. Taylor!

Reading/Writing

We have really taken off with our reading!  Knowing that we CAN read is a wonderful thing. We read stories as classes and in our small groups.  We work on sounding out words, fluency with our sight words and of course using clues to figure out unfamiliar words.

As our reading skills are growing so are our writing.  Using our sounds to build words is so powerful!  

 As authors and illustrators we are able to communicate an entire story, with a beginning, middle and ending.  Can you believe it?! We have been in school 62 days and have grown in so very many ways.  The best part about writing our books is of course sharing them with others in the classroom.  

Celia is reading her story New Fish to the class.

Math

In Math we are deep thinkers and figuring out all kids of ways to solve problems.  It is good to know that often there are many ways to arrive at an answer.









Thank you Mystery Readers!  You are such a gift to our students and school.  Thank you for taking the time to share a story (or two) with us.


Things to Remember:

**Home Exhibition Projects are due on Thursday, November, 29.  The Exhibition will take place on 11/30 in the 1st floor lobby.  Since there are 80 Kindergarten students, please remember that we are asking that the house not be any bigger than a shoe or cereal box.  We are very excited to share these with our school and community.  We have such creative Explorers!

**Hope Totes for The City Mission- Each Kindergarten class has been assigned a different item needed to fill a tote.  *We have set a goal to fill 28 totes.  Please send donations with your child on Friday, November 30.  We are anxious to see just how many totes we can fill.  

Reminder-

Mrs. Humphrey's class: bar soap

Mrs. Snyder's class: toothpaste

Mrs. Taylor's class: toothbrush

Mrs. Wightman's class: shampoo

**Ms. Lipka is asking that everyone save lids for her.  All sizes!  Just send them into your son/daughter's class and we will be certain to get them to her.  

Thank you for all you do each and every day!  

Where We Are in Place and Time

To kick off our new unit, students reflected on what they felt a
home was and what a journey might be.  

Need and Wants Pre-Assessment-Studnts were asked to order the objects
as to what they needed most to survive.  So fun to hear the
Explorers explain their reasoning for the order they chose!

We have begun our second Unit of Inquiry, Where We are in Place and Time.  It is an inquiry into homes and journeys.  In this IB unit we will discuss homes, shelters, journeys and transportation.  We will explore how the environment impacts the type of shelter we live in as well as the materials needed to build a home.  Through this unit of study, our Explorers will begin to understand the items they "need" to survive and what items are "wants."  Studying the effects of Hurricane Sandy has opened our eyes tremendously about what we, and others, really need to survive. 

 Here the students had to sort a variety of items as they helped, Ms. Vogias "pack" for a trip.  They had to work in teams and think critically about what she needed to bring as space was limited.  Oh the discussions that were propelled from this activity were fantastic!

After reading about houses and homes across the world, two Expolers designed a house with stilts and had scissions on how it could live in an environment with water.  Such Thinkers!



We took part in our own elections as we geared up for the nation's elections.  It was a lot of fun to vote as classes and compare our results with other grades and classrooms throughout the school.

Reflecting and Communicating are important aspects of the Learner Profile.  As the Explorers journal and work in their Problem Solving Notebooks, sharing is so very important.  

Word families are so much fun!  

In math we are working hard on the concept "How many more," as well and the cardinality of numbers 11-20.  

Here two students are playing Get the Moon math game and working on "How many more."


Thank you to our Mystery Readers!  We love, love, love having you come.  

Things to Remember:
November 16-Mr. Taylor will be coming to discuss the National Guard's efforts to help others after Hurricane Sandy
November 21-23-Thanksgiving Vacation
November 29-Home Projects are due (information was given at conferences)
November 30-Home Exhibition