What a whirlwind of a week and a half! We had lots of fun getting to know each other. We played games and shared stories. We thought about things that would go into making this Alpha Classroom the best it can be. We decided on several agreements we could all commit to working on this year.
We still have a few handprints to add to our sign but it looks like we are on our way to a great year…
We worked together to make an Alphabet frieze…
We worked on our First Quarter Self Portraits!
This Week in Our Big Backyard…
We took a close-up look a what lies beneath our feet. We discovered there’s SO MUCH MORE in “dirt” besides dirt! We recorded our observations in our nature journals.
We found many sizes of rocks, grass, even BUGS! We talked about how some of the things we found came from living things (like trees) and other items were nonliving. We noticed that nobody’s sample was exactly alike; most looked and felt very different. Some soil held more moisture and felt heavy and sticky like clay. After examining and sorting our soil, we poured it into our jars and added water.
We shook the jars like milkshakes – you should have seen all of the air bubbles pop up! Then we set them in a safe spot to settle.
This Week in Math…
Ms. Kim’s Group…
…talked about why we practice math skills; what’s in it for US?! Turns out, math skills help us solve problems and they help us avoid them too! We learned that our brains naturally love sorting things into patterns because when we find patterns we don’t have to rediscover something and we can make predictions. We spent time sorting our SHOES! We also started working on our Number Journals.
Ms. Andrea’s Group…
…began by building a class calendar for the month of August. We reviewed the months of the year & seasons before creating our own personal calendars for the month. Alphas added personalized illustrations that included celebrations of school, pets, family events and more. Next we went on a number hunt around the classroom to find & record numbers & number words into our math journals. We played a number identification game by collecting pairs of number cards & their matching number word counterparts. Finally, we worked together to correct our 1-100 chart.
This Week in Language Arts…
Ms. Andrea’s Group began by building an alphabet arc on our red rug and identifying the first letter of our names. Throughout the week we met the letters M, S & A. We learned their letter names, sounds and upper/lowercase letter formations. We had fun playing phonemic awareness & rhyming games. We also learned to sort items by initial sound and whether or not the sounds rhyme. We constructed letters using our bodies and practiced writing our full name. Each day we learned a little more about a different “Student of the Day.”
Ms. Kim’s Group…
This week we read together and to ourselves. We went Book Shopping and we did some Word Work. We wrote in our Vocabulary Books, and our Nature Journals, and we created our own fictional “main characters.” Some shared their characters with the class, and others chose use one of our Class Agreements “to pass” on sharing with the class.
This Week in Monday Lab…
We started the day learning some tricks with paper – then applied them by creating a Fantasy Playground!
We talked about our plans for this year, which include along with engineering challenges, some cooking, working with textiles, gardening, and games. This list looks like we will cover all those letters in STEAM (S-cience, T-echnology, E-ngineering, A-rt, and M-ath)!
Before we start cooking next week, we needed to take a tour of the kitchen!
One of our friends went to a Magic Summer Camp and shared one of his many magical effects! Thanks Isaac, we can’t wait to see another!!!
