Ms. Brown's Blog: November 6, 2019

Hello Families,

I wanted to inform you about an upcoming volunteer opportunity! We have Art Felt coming to our classroom on November 26, 2019 to create art projects with us. It would be helpful to have 4 or 5 adults come to support this work. I will also ask for adult support with the MuseoKits that will be arriving mid November once we have our classroom schedule. I will be updating the Google Drive Volunteer Document, here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iVn40gFQRRU_BdpVTp8nAcOl6pOIe_-HLccNJAI3H-0/edit?usp=sharing
Please email me if you're able to join us for Art Felt and I will add your name to the document! :)

The other half is in our school display cabinet.

Thanks so much if you were able to attend our whole school sharing assembly last week about the Circle of Courage! After, the students were so happy and energized! Many of them were saying things like, "I wish we could do it again!". It was so great to see their enthusiasm for learning and sharing their understanding with other classes and adults! Of course, the dot song was a real hit with its catchy tune! Here's the link if you'd like to keep singing it at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_I43cxDQ-o

Some students have been extending their understanding of graphing and data collection and working on counting strategies for addition. This work has been documented on SeeSaw. Other students are working on learning teen numbers through various Montessori materials. Another group is working with the Montessori bead chains to practice skip counting groups of 2's, 5's and 10's and track these patterns on hundreds charts.

In addition, we introduced some 2D shapes today, and created pictures with patterning blocks. These pictures were sent home on SeeSaw, feel free to quiz your child on the names of the shapes they see... and remember... we don't use the term "diamond" in mathematics, we call the diamond shape a rhombus! :) The next step of this work will be to analyze the data to demonstrate an understanding of shape and space, data collection, and representation of number.

Today, we introduced the idea of gratitude and started working on cover pages for our ongoing Gratitude Journals. This work will allow for students to document things they are grateful in various ways, such as mind maps, pictures, sketch-noting, etc. Different ways to communicate and share this information will be introduced throughout the year, we will begin with list making. Here is the beginning of our cover page art, tomorrow we will add paint:

We have also begun talking about what we have in our outdoor space at school and what we need. We explored the spaces using our 4 senses (no tasting allowed please, haha) and then documented what we currently have. Then, I shared some pictures of possibilities for outdoor spaces, and students shared with their small groups about what we need. They came up with some awesome ideas for things we could have to make our outdoor space better, for example, hills, ponds, natural gardens, natural play structures, etc. This will be part of a year-long inquiry about designing spaces that support learning, play and exploration. It is also part of the professional development series I am involved in this year, Design the Shift.