K/1st: Week of 11/11

Abundance: when you have so many things to share…

This week in Our Big Backyard…

TREES! TREES! TREES! We were all about the trees this week! Our Big Backyard at school has some great pecan trees planted in the early 1900s and across the street, we have examples of a native tree called a live oak. These are very different trees, but they still have the same parts. We went outside and sketched side-by-side portraits of each. We noticed these trees were shaped differently, in sizes, and colors. Everything in nature has a purpose – so we pondered, and inferred why each tree became the the way it was.

Meet our Pecan tree… Alphas do some rough outlines to capture its shape…

Meet our neighbors, the Live Oaks…

Back in class, Alphas flesh out our tree sketches…

Alphas compare trees and share ideas what’s so great about being their own particular shape!

We learned that all the different parts of a tree perform important functions. The trunk of a tree is like the circulatory system of the tree; it is responsible for carrying water up from the ground to the rest of the plant – especially the leaves – then the trunk caries nutrients made in the leaves down throughout the plant. We learned that the trunk is formed in layers and the outer layer, and the rest of the tree is covered in bark. Bark is unique to each tree. Bark has a purpose – everything on a tree has a purpose – we learned that bark is rough, and dry, and soaks up water like a sponge – but the water in the bark doesn’t get absorbed by the tree. Why do they do that? Alphas had lots of interesting inferences! We did a bark absorption experiment.

“Jack, I wanted to SEE your bark…not HEAR your bark!!!! 🙂

How would you describe the bark?

Alphas compared the bark of each tree and came up with distinctive words to describe them.

We’ll see how much H2O this bark will soak up…

Examining it the next day.

We learned that leaves are the kitchen AND the digestive system of a tree, AND the respiratory system! Alphas already knew that plants provide out planet with the most important resource creatures need in order to live: AIR. Many remembered from last year that we can thank phytoplankton in the ocean for over half of the air we breathe – and the other half comes from land plants – like trees! Even though leaves only make up 5% of a tree’s mass, what they do is HUGE – Alphas learned how the green chlorophyll and water in the leaves changes into nutritious food for the plant when sunlight falls on the leaf. It’s called photosynthesis. Some Alpha remembered that humans make nutrients through their skin when exposed to sunlight: vitamin D! Scientists, naturalists, and poets often think about how things remind them of other things… It is kind of cool to think we are mighty like a tree.

We did a photosynthesis experiment to see if we could witness a leaf producing air through its stomata…

The part of the tree we rarely see are its roots. We learned that most of a tree’s roots lie below the surface only about 12-18 inches below the ground and may have a much deeper tap root. They anchor the tree to keep it stable. They grow up to twice as wide as the crown of the tree but have been found to grow as far as 30 MILES! They grow and split into fractals like their above-surface branches until the roots are very thin – in fact, they are called “root hairs.” These absorb water and minerals from the soil with the help of mycelium. We learned that this symbiotic relationship helps trees help each other! Here’s a link to a video if you’re interested. Alphas did a lovely art project in honor of trees.

Red Table trees are talking!

This week in Language Arts…

Ms. Eliza’s group…

Our letters of the week were 2 consonants…Uu & Gg. We found that writing g’s is a bit complicated, but understanding that we can use the magic C to turn it into an uppercase G or a lowercase g really helped us! We also learned that G is one of the 3 consonants that can make 2 sounds (c and y are the others). We played letter sound games…

and unscrambled short sentence puzzles to copy in our journals. This way we get to practice handwriting AND how to write a sentence skills at the same time.

We read Steven Kellog’s Jack in the Beanstalk, What is a Tree? and a beautiful legend Ginko and Moon by LIsa Mertins.

Ms. Kim’s Group…

We talked about how ODD the world can be sometimes. It can be confusing – even scary – I like to write about “odd” experiences in my journal because writing helps me think it through. Scientists do this too! Odd things are what drives science! We spent a lot of time talking about odd things we experienced or observed. We jotted our notes down to share later too.

We did some Picture-of-the-Day-s…

Practiced some bumpy bouncy letters and sounded out some words with initial blends…

Shared our observations from our P&P…

Waldorf teachers help students build graphomotor skills through fine motor work by isolating particular line shapes. They call it creative form drawing. We thought it might be a nice addition to our Alpha fine motor fitness this quarter! We made gradient lines and arcs this week.

This week in Math…

Ms. Kim’s Group…

We practiced some subtraction skills – focusing mainly on what the numbers mean. Numbers are a very abstract concept so we spend lots and lots of time putting things together and taking things apart as we compute and quantify.

We continued to explore place value and group things into sets of tens and extras…or leftovers.

One set of of 10 +1 , and one set of ten + 2…

We made “cookies” for the character Poppy, from the novel we are reading at the end of the day.

Alphas brought their cookie sheets to circle, then we circled-up sets of ten to see how many cookies we each made for Poppy!

Practicing our “teens”…

Ms. Eliza’s group…

This week we continued to explore how to solve word problems by learning how to create our own. Then we solved each other’s problems.

We had problems that involved rubies, bubble gum, skittles, and magic mixies to name a few. Writing our own word problems teaches us so much about how to solve them. We created addition, subtraction and part unknown (also subtraction) challenges. We even solved what we discovered was a multiplication problem! Playing games, which we take time to do every week, is a fun way to apply our math skills.