Friday Fun

The Cardinals visited Gwen in the library early this morning. When we walked in, she had a book picked out that many of our Cardinals recognized, Harold and the Purple Crayon. Gwen shared with us that this book has always been one of her favorites since she was a little girl! Besides being a very fun story, the book also inspired some discussion of cause and effect and how one event, or thought, might gradually build and lead into another as Harold navigates his imagined purple world, and all of the exciting adventures within.
Since our Cardinals showed a lot of enthusiasm for Harold's adventures, Gwen asked if we would like to sign out two other Harold and his Purple Crayon books. She walked us through the library sign out process, and showed us how she keeps track of who has what books signed out.



Besides going to the Library with Gwen, the class kept very busy this morning. All the different classroom areas were put to use and there were even a few serious building projects going on in the magnet tiles area that left the Cardinal teachers amazed! Another project that filled our morning, which we started in September and we have begun to update today is our Self Portraits. Slowly the Cardinals are all taking individual turns in front of a mirror and learning to translate what they see into a drawing. This time, we focused on identifying the different shapes that come together to make the parts of our faces as well as continuing to match and replicate colors and features.

Later in the morning, we walked to Jason's music room. The Cardinals have been doing an excellent job in our music classes each week. So well, in fact, that we were asked to come to a special extra music class today with Jason and Alicia to learn a Spanish song that several classes will be performing at the Winter Show. We have been asked to learn this song so that we can record a copy, like the recording we made in our last class with Jason, to be used to help teach other classes the piece!



It has been a wonderfully busy week with many new adventures, as well as new responsibilities, for our Cardinals. We have amazing pictures of everything they have accomplished which we will hopefully be able to post when our technical difficulties are resolved. They have continued to rise to each new challenge, and we are delighted to move forward with our projects and introduce new concepts and ideas with which they can continue to build their ever expanding intellects. Look for some exciting excursions planned for next week!

Beading, Gluing,Dough and More...

November 29, 2012

Our day flew by and both the children and the teachers were truly surprised when they looked at the clock and realized that it was almost time for lunch!!  The morning was filled with children working at all of our learning centers and the wonderful buzz of children talking and working cooperatively together filled the air.  We continued to explore the salt and flour dough we had made earlier in the  week at the Sensory Table and the children really enjoyed molding and sculpting with this soft  dough.  At our Fine Motor Table we extended our work with beading by adding different types of beads- plastic, colorful wood beads and thin beading elastic string.  The children were able to make long necklaces with this new string and because of the elasticity they able to wear them with ease as necklaces. The children worked for longer periods of time and practiced fine motor skills more intentionally.  Some children sorted the beads and decided that they wanted to make a necklace that was all one color or a particular pattern. Language and Literacy was experienced directly at our Journal Table this morning as each child had the opportunity to pick any topic which they wanted to draw and dictate a story about.  Math Center- children were involved in creating towers with the unifix cubes.  The children liked practicing their counting skills as they counted and practiced 1:1 correspondence when working with their unifix towers.  Dramatic play was busy with friends playing together in creative imaginative ways.  We noticed that the on-going theme of  ' doctor and sick patient ' was consistent throughout the morning.  Outdoor play was such fun today!  The weather was beautiful and the children really loved playing together outdoors.  Our Catbird friends had brought really fun, little people  size boxes outside and our children LOVED getting inside the boxes and playing together.  The growth in our children's social development is so clearly observed throughout the day.  The children choose to be with their friends all during the day and they love doing things together.  The conversations that are heard during Choice Time, Snack and Lunch reflect the sense of comfort and deep connection that the children feel towards one another. 

Wednesday News

This Wednesday...

Music Class 
Today's music class began with a special performance by the 4th graders who have begun preparing for the Lower School Winter Show. The big kids' dance was very impressive and we were sure to show our appreciation by clapping afterwards and even sharing some of our thoughts with them. Trace said, "You were really good!" Then we started our own class and the Cardinals were excited to hear that we would be learning a song to perform at the Winter Show too! Jason gave us the song as well as some fun hand motions which we will be working on from now until the show. We worked hard to do our best with the new music. We did so well that Jason asked if we would let him record us singing to be an example recording for all the other classrooms who will be learning this song! So we warmed up our best singing voices and did a great job. We were thrilled to listen to our very first Cardinals' singing recording!

Choice Time Invitations

Beading
We introduced beading today and the children were fully engaged in this fine motor activity.  Donny said" Look I put them all over it. I made mine cover the whole pipe cleaner." "I made one and Christina helped me make a butterfly" said Kate.  The children worked for extended periods of time practicing fine motor skills. The children looked at the different sizes of the beads and they especially liked looking at the different shapes of beads. We were reminded of the shape book we had been looking at and compared a few bead shapes to the pictures.  Children were curious about how may beads would fit on the pipe cleaner and they were interested in exploring ways to bend the pipe clearer to make beaded shapes.

Meeting For Worship
We gathered on the rug for Meeting For Worship this morning and the children setteled into silence with ease.  We lit a candle and listened to the story If Peace is... by Jane Baskwill. The children are learning to appreciate quiet moments together and we are all feeling a warm sense of community during this shared time together. Respect and thoughtfulness towards to each other and our Cardinal community continues to evolve.

Building
Building continues to be an interest in our classroom. The children engaged with the big wooden blocks creating an elaborate house structure today. They began adding details to set the scene, picking out different wooden tree pieces to create a front yard and back yard to the house. Magna tiles also are a strong material and support in our building study. The children are becoming more focused in creating height to the structures created with these magnetic tile blocks. This helps to strengthen their fine motor skills while also allowing the children the opportunity to identify different parts, rooms, and other pieces of a building.

Making and Manipulating Dough
Another center attracting many children was the dough center. Today, we began this activity by looking at a recipe to identify the materials and tools we would need to mix up to make this tactile mixture. The Cardinals experienced number identification and measuring as they determined how much of each ingredient and then proceeded to scoop and pour them into a large bowl. We used flour, warm water, and salt to make a moldable dough. After a few minutes of stirring and working the dough with our hands, it was ready to be used for sculpting. The children then eagerly used their palms and hands to figure out what it felt like. Children created food, animals, or even worked at making a mold of their hands as they pressed into the dough. It was interesting to see how engaging this material was and see the different ways that the children approached it in their play.

Our Morning ended with exploration of our outdoor area. The children continue to engage in each area, establishing deeper connections with friends and even branching out to introduce themselves to new friends. Today, a small group of friends from the Cardinal Class began a game of hide and seek with each other. It was a wonderful way to close our morning time together.

Tuesday News

Interest in Building Continues to Evolve...

At Morning Meeting we re-visited the Language Experience chart we created last week where we identified all different types of buildings we could think of.  How do we begin to extend our thinking and the scope of our study? What comes next...?  We began our morning discussion by asking the children to think about what they thought buildings were made of, and as the children excitedly called out various 'materials' we decided to begin a new Language Experience chart.  The children are most interested in seeing their spoken words in print and the process of recording their ideas on large paper seems to be quite interesting for our children. Some of the responses were:
            Wood
             Steel
             Flowers
             Metal
             Glass
             Bricks
             Glue
We introduced a beautiful book series titled  Houses Around The World by Debbie Gallagher.  Each book describes how there are many different types of homes around the world  and that homes provide shelter for people.  Homes Around The World  presents five different types of homes in each book.  The tiles in the series that we looked at were: City and Country Homes, Cave and Underground Homes, Mud, Grass and Ice Homes, Portable Homes and Castles and Mansions.  These books have beautiful photographs of homes around around world and were a wonderful launching pad for conversation and further study.

In small groups children continued to work with small shapes to create their own buildings. They used different color plastic shapes to design their buildings and then had the opportunity to describe their work. They glued the shapes onto heavy cardboard when they were ready to make their buildings more permanent.

At our Math center, children were interested in building towers with small colorful, stackable caps.  We placed 4 individual small ice trays and a basket full of colored caps on the table and observed as the children were drawn to the center.  Children explored the caps by scooping up hand and armfuls of caps from the basket and then the "play" seemed to take a more intentional turn. Children then took a small handful of caps and started to sort them by color into the ice trays. Other children carefully stacked them one by one on top of each other  creating tall towers. One child made stacks of red caps, purple caps, and yellow caps of different heights.  This was a perfect time to begin to introduce concepts associated with comparison; more than, less than, and same as.

Language Activities

We introduced new alphabet stamps and stamp pads today at the Writing center.  The children had the opportunity to stamp letters and practice letter recognition skills.  At the journal table we worked on our final entry in our Herb Journals.  The children had the opportunity to observe their oils (if they were still at school) and respond to the question " What do you think you could make with the herbs or what did you already cook with the herbs ?"  This was a fun way to close our herb experiment and observations and to practice expressive language skills, observation skills and fine motor skills. Families are welcome to take home their herbs this week!

Surprise Party For Christina!

We learned that today was Christina's birthday and we planned a surprise party for morning snack! The children helped to make a beautiful birthday card and we had birthday cake for snack.  We filled Christina's cake with candles and presented her with flowers and cards for her birthday. It was very special to share this day with Christina.  Her parents brought her special "Cardinal"  gifts  (a Cardinal thermometer and a Cardinal finger puppet) which she shared with all of her Cardinal friends.

To finish our morning time together, we played in the common shared area  (the Commons) outside our classroom today. The children enjoyed the open space where we could build with the large blocks and work with the long cylinders.  This worked out so well, especially because we did not go outside due to wet weather. We read before lunch which was a great way to close our morning conversation about buildings and homes.  The children were asked to talk with their families about the materials that their homes are made of ... please join in our discovery and exploration of this study.  Families are also welcome to bring in a photograph of their house or of other buildings that the children are interested in!

Pictures hopefully coming soon..Our Tech Department is working on the problem!

¡Feliz Dia de Acción de Gracias!

 ¡Feliz Dia de Acción de Gracias! Happy Thanksgiving! During Wednesday’s clase de Español, Los Cardinals flew into Argentina and settled into this Spanish speaking country. Upon our arrival, we gathered and sat in a círculo and began our traditional greeting. Each child greets the teacher with a hand shake and the following dialogue:

Alicia: ¡Benos día _________!

Child: ¡Buenos día Alicia!

Alicia: ¿Cómo estás?

Child: ¡Muy bien, gracias!

Our greeting is then followed by the following song that is sang to the tune of “Are You Sleeping”

Buenos días, Buenos días

¿Cómo estás?, ¿Cómo estás?

Yo muy bien gracias, yo muy bien gracias.

¿Y tú? ¿Y tú?

After our traditional viaje (travel) and morning greeting, we gathered around and learned some new words. After practicing them a few times, we then put them in a song. To help us with the tune, we watched a video on the iPad and followed along...

Doy gracias por mis amigos porque me gusta jugar.

Doy gracias por la música porque me gusta cantar.

Doy gracias por mi maestras porque me gusta aprender.

Doy gracias por comida porque me gusta comer.

Doy gracias por mi familia y también por la amistad.

El Día de Acción de Gracias nos trae felicidad.

I’m thankful for all my friends because you know we love to play.

I’m thankful for the food that I eat each and every day.

I’m thankful for music because you know I love to sing.

I’m thankful for my teachers because they teach me so many things.

I’m thankful for my family, for the love they’re always bringing.

And I’m happy I get to see them on this day of Thanksgiving.

Los Cardinales were “chirping” away to this new song. Wow! Talk about cross-disciplinary learning.   

¡Hasta nuestro proximo viaje! (Until our next flight.)

Paz,

Alicia

November 26

The Story of Today

It was wonderful to see all the Cardinals back in school today! Everyone was excited to see each other this morning and there were many group hugs to welcome one another back to our classroom. We shared what we did over Thanksgiving in our journals, and jumped right back into our routine with ease.

Our morning was full of building activities and getting reacquainted with all our many exciting centers.  The interest in building was ever present.... it is very exciting to observe the emerging of this study as we observe the children in their work and play . Our emerging study of Building leads so naturally to support our math curriculum that focuses more intentionally on shapes. We invited children to explore building and shapes using medium size bristle blocks at the math center today. We introduced one of  the books from the math curriculum series  Math Counts - Shapes.  The photographs and text of the books in this math series encourage conversation about topics that are mathematical.  By talking with children about mathematical concepts they begin to explore and understand the basic concepts that future mathematic  skills will be built upon.  This book raises the awareness of shapes and  has wonderful photographs that highlight shapes all around us; bricks, walkways, bike tires etc. are just of few of the photographs in the this book.

We also had the pleasure of having art early in our schedule this morning. We ventured to Sam's art studio where she talked to us about colors. Between Sam's extensive knowledge and the Cardinal's impressive understanding of how colors are mixed to make new colors, we talked about how many colors we can create using only the three primary colors, blue, red, and yellow.  Then, Sam gave out little bags with "baker's clay" to each child.  She told us about this special dough which can be shaped and then baked or air dried into a hard sculpture.  With our discussion of color mixing still fresh in our minds, Sam came around with food dye in those three primary colors and we all chose two colors to drop into our dough. Then we pinched and squished the colors into the dough, exercising all of our hand and finger muscles until we were happy with our finished color.  Taking our baker's clay out of their bags, we molded our colorful creations and added pipe cleaners until we had beautiful, unique sculptures we left with Sam to harden.

                    Music Concert With Peter Moses

The Cardinals joined the Doves' class for a special concert with Peter Moses where we showed off our awesome musicality and enjoyed some very fun, silly songs! The children loved singing along with Peter and playing instruments.

Outdoor Fun

The crisp fall air felt so wonderful today playing outdoors! The children loved playing in our outdoor classroom and it was fascinating to see how theri play is changing as they have become more familiar with the space.  The large motor building area was quite popular today as children were observed carrying large tubes and wood branches to build with.  The mud kitchen continues to be a favorite spot as well as the sand and music area.  We continue to feel so fortunate to have such an incredible play area at our school.

****Blogger is experiencing technical difficulties uploading pictures. We hope this will be up and running soon. In the meantime, please enjoy reading about your child's day!

HOLIDAY AND TRADITION SHARING -

As the Cardinals have grown together, we truly feel like one loving and caring family. As we continue to create bonds and deeper connections among each other, the teachers would like to extend the invitation to families to visit the classroom and share about their own traditions or special holiday activities. This is a wonderful opportunity for the Cardinals to learn about each other’s cultures. Activities shared in the past included reading a story, singing and dancing, working on a craft or art project, cooking, or sharing family symbols of the holiday. Take a look at our calendar for possible times to come in and share with the class.

Visiting, Giving and More!

A Very, Very Full Morning

The Cardinals had an unexpectedly busy morning! We were surprised first by a visit from Christina's brother Billy who spent a little time building with the magnet tiles and listening to our Cardinal classmates chat about their classroom. Another special visit the Cardinals received this morning was by Paula's grandson Harrison! Harrison and his parents, Evan and Nicole, came to see our classroom and spend some time with us. Harrison jumped right in to play and our Cardinal friends did an excellent job including this younger honorary Cardinal into their fun. Then, we welcomed our favorite middle school friends who stopped by to spend the morning with us and we were sure to include all four of them in the fun during choice time.

One center open during Choice was the Herb Journal center where our little scientists recorded and made observational drawings regarding the changes they noticed. They carefully chose colored pencils to create the shades of the oil and herbs inside the jar.

Another exciting and engaging activity was creating gifts out of our baked and wrapped up pumpkin breads we had created in our own AFS ovens. We used some fun colorful ribbons to make them beautiful items as an expression of our gratitude to our favorite resource teachers. We made, and gift wrapped one pumpkin bread for everyone who we are thankful to have as a part of our community, and we delivered them all to these special friends throughout the day. We have a few breads left to deliver tomorrow!

The outdoor classroom further stimulated and continued our social connections with our peers, teachers, and other classmates as we engaged in this wide and inviting space. Games such as "Find the missing Cat" and "Hide and Seek" are favorites that we are seeing played over and over again.

Our building study is gaining momentum as we engaged with a variety of colored and wooden blocks on trays this morning. It didn't stop there...we continued to create structures with Magna Tiles and the larger wooden blocks as well. We continued to add to our "Types of Buildings" list with a parking garage, dog house, cat house, toy store, igloo, and doll house. We ended our morning together reading There's No Place Like Home by Marc Brown. This story was an interesting support to our building study as it explained types of houses, materials that houses could be made of, and even some silly houses  such as a pickle-mobile! 

Reminder: Tomorrow is a half-day at school. It is a noon dismissal and parents are welcome to come a few minutes earlier if they would like to avoid the busyness of the parking lot! Thank you so much as always for your continued support in all that we do. 

A Monday with the Cardinals

On this day...

The Cardinals began by taking a short walk to the library where Gwen had a special story to share with us. She introduced us to Elephant & Piggie, two friends who have many stories written about them. Today's story was Should I Share My Ice Cream?, and we got to watch as Elephant thought through the dilemma of deciding to share with his friends. Gwen explained the idea of sharing as a meaningful introduction to the giving and thoughtful nature of the upcoming holiday, Thanksgiving. After the story, Gwen let us take both the book, and our new friends back to our classroom where she thought we would enjoy acting out our own Elephant & Piggie adventures. They certainly became essential characters in many stories that the Cardinals began acting out!

During choice time, in following with our current building theme, we opened up a list of "Types of Buildings" and as the Cardinals passed by, they suggested different kinds of buildings they have seen. We listed them and found that we had a rather extensive list that had nineteen different types of buildings including an airport and dress store. We practiced one to one correspondence and number recognition as we worked with our list identifying the different types of structures that would fit into this category. This language experience provided us with an opportunity to build our vocabulary while becoming more familiar with sight words that we may encounter during this study of buildings. During a quick meeting after choice time, we talked about our list and even added to it as we talked through the various places we may have seen or visited.  

After our meeting together, we enjoyed the inviting fall weather in our outdoor classroom. In small groups, children also worked inside with different shaped blocks creating their very own buildings. Each child carefully chose shapes to represent different parts of their structures and clearly explained specific details about their work. Their attention, patience, dedication show a strong interest in this study. Their growing knowledge of buildings is becoming apparent as they engage in activities such as this and many questions are beginning to come up, creating possible avenues for our study to follow. In this activity, the Cardinals used their fine motor skills to squeeze glue and position blocks on a cardboard platform. Each child explained then created their own "building story", identifying each by name and discussing the parts or shapes as rooms, people, or other aspects of their sculpture art. 

After outside time, we joined together on the rug for a shared read-aloud of Thanksgiving is Here, in which a family all gathered at Grandma and Grandpa's. The story shared one perspective of how this tradition can be celebrated through a family dinner experience. It showed a family structure including aunts, uncles, cousins, and even friends all engaging in responsibilities and fun activities around cooking, cleaning, and the sharing of a meal! Hope everyone had a wonderful Monday morning as the Cardinals sure did in our room! 

Just a reminder - It's a short week, Half Day on Wednesday, School Closed on Thursday and Friday. Thank You!

Español con Los Cardinales (Spanish with the Cardinals

¡Bienvenidos familia, amigas, y amigos! Welcome!

I bet you have been wondering why I wear that gorgeous vest. Well, acquisition happens naturally and subconsciously when we are surrounded by another language. My goal is to spend the first few minutes of each class speaking in English to the children as I explain the day’s activity. As the children gain some comprehension of the Spanish language, I will then present the introduction of the day’s activity in Spanish. I have presented my red sequin vest to the children. When I put this vest on, it indicates that I am the Spanish teacher and therefore I will be speaking solely in Spanish. We volamos (fly) to Spain and other Spanish speaking countries at the beginning of each class session and once we land, we all do our very best to speak in the language of that country, Spanish.   

During our clase de Español, we continue to practice the Spanish words used when greeting each other. To reinforce the vocabulary words for “Hello” and “Good-bye”, we sang the following songs (sung to the tune of “London Bridge”):

 ‘Hola’ means hello,

hello, hello.

‘Hola’ means hello

¡Hola amigos!

 

‘Adíos’ means good-bye

good-bye, good-bye

‘Adíos’ means good-bye

Adíos amigos

 Then, using the polite gesture of a hand shake, we each took turns at greeting one another.

 

Alicia: “Buenos dia __________” (Good morning __________ )

Child: “Buenos dia Alicia”

Alicia: ¿Cómo estás? (How are you?)

Child: ¡Muy bien, gracias! (Very well, thank you!)

 

To highlight these expressions, we sang the following to the tune of “Are you Sleeping”:

Buenos días, Buenos días

¿Cómo estás?, ¿Cómo estás?

Yo muy bien gracias, yo muy bien gracias.

¿Y tú? ¿Y tú?

Now that we know how to say "Good Morning" in Spanish, we wanted to learn how to say "Good Night". So, to help us find out we began to read the Spanish version of Margaret Wise Brown’s, "Good Night Moon". Go ahead, ask us how it is said ...

Until my next noticias (news) ....

Paz,

Alicia

Working Together

Today we began with a brief morning meeting. We talked about our current building study and what we know about building and what we would like to learn about building. After reading a book called "Building A House", we listed some questions we had about how to build a house and what types of jobs are needed to create a house. These thoughtful questions will be useful inspiration for further research and projects within our Building Topic!

An interesting activity we started today was our observational drawings in our Herb Journals.

These wonderful little journals have supported our science oriented Cardinals in their experiment expressions. We asked them to sit down with their Herb Jars and look at what they notice about the contents. Interesting ideas that these young scientists observed and recorded were a change in color of the oil and even a change in how many of the herbs inside were floating and sinking.

We look forward to continuing our observation journals over the next several days.

Music with Jason today was a special adventure. We jumped right into the songs we have been working on and did an excellent job showing off our beautiful singing voices, even for some visitors who had come to tour and observe our school today. The Cardinals, as gracious hosts to these visitors, not only showed how much they have been learning with Jason, but even included our guests in their welcome song, asking them to join our circle for some of our activities!

In addition to our beautiful singing voices, we demonstrated our abilities of musical expression through movement when we created "hand fish" to "swim to the music" of a classical piece. We were then able to include scarves to help express the flowing nature of the music through our movements.

 On top of all of these activities, the Cardinals took a journey down to the cafeteria this morning. We followed the clues our noses gave us all the way to the basement where the cafeteria is located.

Once there, we were able to see where the older members of our community go to eat and met some of the wonderful people who take care of our AFS family through their skills in the kitchen. We asked interesting questions such as what kinds of food they were making for lunch today, and discussed the cooking process.

Through our conversation, the Cardinals' have even decided on doing a baking experiment looking at what happens to batter when it's baked and why we heat batters in ovens rather than freeze them or put them in the refrigerator to created baked goods.

Our ever enthusiastic scientist-Cardinals were excited to hypothesize possible outcomes to this new experiment.

After our adventure we stopped in the cafeteria and had our snack at the tables like the big kids at AFS!