Water, Water Everywhere!
This week, we investigated what many rocky seashores offer…shelter and food for some of the world’s most adaptable creatures in the intertidal zones. (oh! how we wish we had tidal pools to explore in our neighborhood!) The ecosystem hangs on for dear life as the tides ebb and flow….and what creates tides?
We learned that the ocean is always moving by the force of winds and currents and especially the pull of the moon’s gravitation creating 2 high tides and two low tides on earth each day.
We looked at the Dr. Suess type animals that can thrive in powerful rushes of water and then intermittent lack of water two times a day and created models for our own tide pool diorama.
Nudibranch (noo-di-brahnk), Sea anemone, Barnacles, octopus & sea urchins…
And…we were delighted to watch an octopus play Tidal Pool Hide and Seek and another make friends with a diver…
This week in Math…
Ms. Kim’s group…
We introduced “doubles,” another adding strategy! This, and skip-counting are examples of early exposure to multiplication. On our first “regular” day, thanks to the late-starts this week, we went on a Shape Safari, which meant we hunted for shapes throughout the building. The only rule with shapes is they have to be closed; polygon shapes must have straight lines.
There’s a triangle in my #4!
Ms. Eliza’s group…
In our exploration of money we investigated the five-center…our one and only nickel. We played roll 12 a game with two money dice to roll, collect and count nickels and dimes which gives us a great opportunity to count by 2’s and 5’s. We started solving problems in our new workbooks.
This week in Language Arts…
Ms. Eliza’s group…
Dove a little deeper into poetry this week by writing our own color poems. Each week we’ll be exploring how poetry is a unique genre of writing and how to think and write like poets who inspire us. We were delighted by each other’s poems that we chose for P&P.
Ms. Kim’s group…
While we didn’t have much time together this week, we were able to introduce the idea that poems are like riddles sometimes because the poet uses words and phrases that create images of an object or a feeling without EVER naming it. Poets like to play with their readers. We tried creating a riddle poem together as a class. Can you guess what we are writing about?
In other news…
Alphas are excited about cooking again! This whole quarter we will be baking with flour, salt, and water. We can make SOOOOO many things using those 3 ingredients as the base! This week Dark Blue table and a few volunteers from Sky Blue table made a LOT of playdough for our class. We used it to make our sea urchins and other tide pool creatures!
We were happy to meet more of our new penguin friends!