K/1st: Week of 11/18

Indoor recess shenanigans

This Week in Our Big Backyard…

We discovered how trees are farms & communities. Trees build relationships with a variety of plants and animals. We learned that trees host other plants such as lichen and mosses. And that a whole host of creatures create and depend on the complex and diverse ecosystems in and around trees. Here in central Texas, mammals such as squirrels, opossums, foxes, deer, need the food and shelter trees provide. Tree frogs can live their entire lives in a tree using water that is caught in the cradle of branches. Reptiles such as snakes and lizards live in our trees. And the huge variety of birds and invertebrates that dwell there are also building nests, resting on branches, eating the fruits and then spreading seeds for the trees when they poop!. We crafted pop-out entries in our journals to illustrate the variety of creatures that live in and around our Texas trees.

We started to explore the food chain by discussing what apex predators are and how they get their energy from creatures that consume producers or smaller animals or invertebrates. Owls became a focus of study as we learned how mature owls are one of the creatures that are at the top of the food chain. We learned that their feet are unique in the families of raptors and they have a special toe that can move from back to front as needed. We also learned that aside from their night-vision abilities and super hearing their other incredible power is silent flight. Owl feathers are designed to move through the air silently. This gives them an advantage to sneak up and snatch their prey. Owls make great subjects for artistic expression….our medium? Watercolor

We learned that an ecosystem is not just part of a food chain, it is also a WEB! Alphas acted one out! It was a powerful reminder of just how connected each plant and animal is to one another. If the balance is upset then the entire ecosystem is rattled!

Alphas knew from the novel we’re reading (Poppy), that when owls digest their food they spit up pellets of all the stuff they can’t digest. Scientists look at these pellets to understand what owls are eating in the wild. It tells them about the nature and health of their ecosystem. Alphas knew that the owl in Poppy was a bad guy who ate field mice, but they also knew that in real life, every creature had to eat. Real owls eat a variety of creatures and they do their part to maintain the balance of the food web. Alphas go to explore some sanitized owl pellets with their table teams and match the tiny bones with a bone chart to find out what creature their owl had eaten.

First, we took measurements…

“WOW…coooooool…lemme see!!!!”

Matching bones…

The first skull spotted!

This week in Language Arts…

We had a lot of togetherness this week with Ms. Eliza out recovering. In honor of Founder’s Day, Alphas wrote things they loved about AHB and in table teams, they shared “appreciations” for each other. We added our friends’ names to specific leaves for our life skills tree.

Ms. Eliza’s group…

Our letters of the week were Ee and Kk. We started writing our nonfiction books about an animal. Our topics vary from Sharks, Cobas, Snakes, Pigs, and Foxes to Puppies, Lions and Narwhals.

Ms. Kim’s Group…

This week we worked on recognizing “final blends” in our spelling work. We made lists of information to go into the informational books we are going to put together when we get back from break! We wrote appreciations of gratitude for our table mates and helped our first-year buddies with spelling and sounding out! Very few photos this week :(

Graphomotor skill practice through “crazy paper” and creative form drawing…

This week in Math…

We had some togetherness this week in math time too! We made some fun dot-to-dot thumbprint art. Each table team got a packet full of unit cubes. Each table had to make a set of ten, trade it for a ten bar, and figure out what was left over. Then with that number, they could make that many thumbprints on their paper. They had to number each dot to make sure they got the correct amount! This was a challenge for the first-year students and an opportunity for the second-year students to mentor their friends with handwriting or with using a number line (no photos as of publication 🙁).

Ms. Kim’s Group…

We used the tiny items from home to make a set of tens and leftovers…We played a dice game we call The Bank Game where we roll a die and gather unit cubes for every dot on the die. When we get a set of ten, we can “go to the bank” and trade our ten cubes for a “ten bar,” and keep on rolling! We made dot-to-dot pictures to practice counting and writing “teen” numbers.’