Hello Good People!
Thank you for so many wonderful Thanksgiving messages; both
Julian and I had a wonderful break with family and friends. Thank you also for
your patience in getting this to you today as opposed to Friday.
As is usual, we will start this post with a few housekeeping
items in list form and then proceed to a more thorough update of what we have
been doing and working on in our classroom.
1.
The wish list will come soon… I hope this week.
You can sign up on the Sign Up Genius form for any item you would like to gift
to our classroom. J
2.
MUG: please have your child bring a mug to keep
at school for the next few months. This is a secret so please do not share this
with them yet: during the anticipation time of the Holidays to come, I like to surprise
the children here and there with hot cider, hot tea or hot chocolate. For
example, when we return from a cold walk to the park on Wednesdays, we will
have a warm drink.
3.
A regular size CARROT by Tuesday, December 5th
: We will be celebrating St. Nicholas Day in our classroom this
year. I will give them a children’s version of the story of this generous
person who lived many years ago and about the traditions that have begun to
remember and honor the act of anonymous giving. In the story, I tell the
children, they need to leave a carrot in their shoe to feed the donkey that St.
Nick travels on. This is a French tradition that I will explain to them: we
leave a carrot in our shoe and St. Nick will leave something for each child. J We will put our indoor
shoes out in our classroom where we come together for gathering time and
classroom meetings.
Wednesday morning,
we will have a surprise.
4.
Warm clothes for outdoors – the cold is coming;
or so I hear.
5.
Finally, THANK YOU for bringing in mason jars
and especially to those who brought some to share. Each child now has one and
we are all set. We planted bulbs – it’s a surprise as to what will emerge. Each
day, this is science, math and language lesson. They observe any change in their
bulb and record the changes their science sketch books. They will be doing more
charting and graphing as they record the height their bulb grows! Finally, and
most importantly, it is a lesson on the Sense of Wonder, which is still very prevalent
at this age. Learning that nature does wondrous things and that this beauty and
wonder contributes to our own inner peace and appreciation of the natural world
comes with this Forcing of a bulb lesson.
Part of what made our Thanksgiving celebration with our
respective families so enjoyable and relaxing was the wonderful celebration that
began in our very own classroom, on Wednesday. We made vegetable soup, butter
and we had a meal together. We put all the tables together, put on table
clothes, and set the tables. The children did most of the work and completely
enjoyed the process! It was so sweet to watch. They served each other (no one
serving themselves), carrying a bowl of hot soup the table and placing it in
front of their friend. Then, we all ate together. I am happy to report that
nearly all the children ae the soup and some even had seconds! The butter was
completely used up in no time which they spread on the bread that Julian
brought as his contribution to our meal.
We want to share about the cooking of the soup! Of course,
the children helped peel and cut up the vegetables and peeled all the garlic.
While I was chopping up garlic, I had several observers! They wanted to taste
the garlic raw. One friend picked up a HUGE piece and asked if she could eat
it. I told her that she would likely find it very “spicy” ! I suggested she try
a small sliver. She did and though she immediately ran for her water bottle,
she came back for more right afterwards. Then, it caught on and few others
loved tasting raw garlic too. The same happened with the onions – I suggested a
small piece and then, they loved them. The day before, I had introduced olive
oil to them and I told them they could dip their finger in the bowl and taste
it if they chose. Many did and thought it was quite tasty. I didn’t know that
that gustatory lesson on olive oil was going to have the impact it did the next
day when they so eagerly asked if they could taste this and that in its raw
version. So, don’t be surprised if your
child asks to taste some raw garlic and onions when you are chopping them up next
time.
IMPT NOTE: In the pictures, you will see a wine bottle! At my home, I keep salt in a wine bottle for easy dispensing when cooking, and I had brought the salt from my home. So, be assured there was no wine in the soup!
The week before Thanksgiving was also the time we did one of
our follow up lessons on the Second Great Lesson, The Coming of Life. We made plaster fossils! They first did some
research, some drawing and then poured the plaster in the mold for their chosen
fossil. Then, when dry, each painted the fossil. We hope they came home in one piece!
All in all, we continue to have just beautiful days, some
better than others but still everyday evolving and growing. They are truly
becoming a community and I am already beginning to talk to them about how next
year, they will have the responsibility and the honor of helping initiate our new
first graders into our community. We have started to choose random names for
lunch partners and, to their distinct surprise, they love getting to know and
sit with different friends!
Math, Geometry and Data &
Measurement
More operations work (addition, subtraction and multiplication)
Types of triangles: right, isosceles and scalene
Geometry vocabulary: vertex, base, height, hypotenuse
Introduction to polygons (names and sides)
Writing numbers in words
Dictations of numbers (we say for example, 3,428 and they write the
number)
Measurement lessons: cups, pints, etc
Clock work with fractions (how many minutes’ in a ¼ hour; ½ hour and ¾ of
an hour) as well as basic lessons on half past, quarter past and o’clock.
Making Geometric shapes in clay (triangular prism; cylinder etc)
How to frame a page with a compass
Shapes made from Right Angle Triangles
Skip counting
Practical Life
Setting a table
Making soup
Forcing a bulb ( we explained what it means to “ force” a bulb)
Knitting with knitting needles
Embroidery with hoops
Tweezing corn from off the cob
Daily preparation of snack (the weekly snack person and a friend of
choice)
How to dust and clean, straighten shelves
Shoe tying, buttoning and lacing
How to roll up (not push up!! ) sleeves (especially a friend’s sleeves)
J
Cosmic Education
Follow up work on the evolution of animals and plants
Names of the geological periods
Tracing the evolution of an animal
The order in which animal life developed on Earth
Root vegetables versus leafy vegetables (types, colors and growth
patterns)
Map work: political map work of Africa and South America.
Language and Literacy
Silent K lessons in words ( knee, knot etc)
More phonograms for long a: a with magic e; ai ( pail); ay ( day) and
eigh ( sleigh)
Words by Heart (these are sight words to memorize) such as the, said,
could etc
Making predictions with our read aloud book
How to use a dictionary
Syllabification (for spelling correctly)
Cursive letters: placement on the paper; capitals and writing long
words in cursive
Reading comprehension exercises
Vocabulary work
No one child has had all these lessons, but all have had
some of these lessons. :)
Music: our new
French song:
We don’t use music when we sing it as they know the tune,
but here is a youtube version of the song we are singing.
I taught it to them a slightly different version:
Tète, épaules,
genoux et pieds
Genoux et
pieds
è 2x
J’ai deux
yeux
Un nez
Une bouche
et
Deux
oreilles
Tète, épaules,
genoux et pieds
Genoux et
pieds
è
2x
Talk to you soon,
Stay warm as Winter arrives in the next week or so!
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