What’s Inside Alphas THIS WEEK!
Our Travel Buddy Visits taught us a LOT about how we can take care of our BONES! 
Helmets protect our skulls when Leo and Bun Bun moved their long and short bones AND
we ride bikes or skate! we learned that Leo actually BROKE a bone in his foot!
Rowan showed Willow how she pounds calcium to her Graham and Garciano taught us about
bones by doing Jiu jitzu! eating healthy foods for our bones!
AND Pao shared his adventures with Buoyant and taught us that leafy greens and delicious beans are a great way to get IRON into our blood. Iron helps carry oxygen in our red blood cells. We SURE hope y’all found those missing GARBANZO BEANS!!!!!!
This week we are exploring our circulatory system! Alphas were experts when it came to cuts and scrapes – this gang has seen some blood before – that’s for sure. We made a model of blood with our table teams.
Blood isn’t just one thing…
It’s water…
It’s plasma…
It’s got red blood cells that deliver oxygen to all parts of the body…
It’s got white blood cells that attack germs to get them out of our bodies…
It’s got platelets that help seal off wounds so germs can’t get in and our skin can heal back together…
We learned that blood flows through blood vessels, and we acted out how blood travels UP! The walls of our blood contract to push blood through…
Blood vessels sending red blood cells to the brain and sending tired blood blood cells back to the heart in order to be sent to the lungs for more oxygen!
Our blood has an amazing pump that pushes the blood throughout our body. We had a little Dance Attack in order to feel our hearts beat!
Then we played “Keepy Uppie” with our tablemates. Turns out, our hearts don’t beat quite as fast when we play games at our tables!
We learned that our hearts are NOT symmetrical! One side of our heart, the right side, only has to pump blood to the lungs which is super close to the heart. The left side of the heart has to pump blood ALL OVER our BODY so it needs to be bigger and stronger than the other side. We did an experiment to see if the size of a squirt bottle would make a difference in how far you could squirt it. IT MADE A BIG DIFFERENCE!
Alphas want to send a big shout out to our AHB community for helping us act out how blood exchanges tired and depleted blood cells for healthy oxygentated blood cells! 
Alphas delivering fresh blood to the Gamma class….
Now,: OFF TO THE Depleted BETA CLASS!!!!!
Alpha’s thoroughly enjoyed our visit with Dr. Winkler, or better known in Anna’s family as Owa! She came to share her knowledge of the heart!
Thank you SO much for sharing your knowledge, time, models, and COOL STETHOSCOPES with us
We learned that our bodies don’t only circulate blood; we have a lymphatic system that circulates fluid in order to capture and rid our bodies of toxins and germs!
We learned that our lymph vessels are very, very tiny and they hover above our blood vessels and absorb toxins right through the vessel walls! They take the toxins and germs to a filter called a lymph node. Lymph nodes produce the white blood cells that attack germs and toxins! The filtering nodes are stationed all over our bodies. Our lymph fluid doesn’t have a heart to pump it; it only flows when we MOVE! Our joints and muscles squeeze the lymph vessels to keep it moving and filtering to keep us healthy. Good thing Alphas are ALWAYS ON THE MOVE!
The collander filtered out some “germs” 
but the spongy-node is able to trap the tiny ones- and when our muscles squeeeeeeeze, the lymphatic fluid gets through, traps the germs, and sends it OUT of our body!
Alphas floated some fat on top of water, then saw how lymph vessels can “absorb” fat by barely touching it…It SOAKS right UP!
Alpha-Scientists makiing keen observations…
This week Dark Blue table made treats to feed our circulatory system.
They used cherries, dark chocolate, hemp seeds, sunflower seeds, and almonds to make Chocolate Bark!
Estelle was in charge of the chocolate…
According to Lucy, it take perseverance to chop up a cup of sticky dried cherries!
This may look gross, but it’s a very healthy treat for your circulatory system (and smells terrific!”
It looks pretty good…
Thoughful taste test…
Isla thinks it passes with flying colors!
Things we heard in Alpha this week…
What does blood look like outside your body?
“It’s like red liquid” – Evie
“Like dark red gatorade but a lot more clearer” – Ava
What do blood vessels look like?
“A water pipe!” “a tube!” “a train station!”
How does blood travel upward?
“Maybe the blood has a tube that lifts it up like the hose in the yard!”
“Keepy uppy”
“I hope the blue balloon doesn’t pop cause that’s my favorite color”
“Our hearts grow as we get older and it slows down as we get older.” -Dr. Winkler
The electrical system sends messages.
“My brain sounds weird” – Graham (upon using the stethoscope to listen to his head).
This week in Math…
Ms. Kim’s Group…
This week we used our Open-ended word problems and turned them into number sentence or “equations.” We are learning that numbers are symbols representing how many “something” we have. We are learning that the plus sign is a symbol that show us we are going to put things together.
We worked on Fall, Winter, and Spring seasons for our circles…
We played a dice game to practice using <,>.= symbols
We made fractal patterns! A fractal is a never-ending pattern. The patterns used in fractals can be different sizes and directions, but the pattern is used over and over to create an ongoing pattern.
Ms. Eliza’s Group…
We’ll be playing a lot of games in Math this year to apply different skills. We discussed good sportsmanship this week and how to appreciate the strategies or ways your partner played. We’re revisiting the months of the year – this would be a great time to look at a calendar at home. Having your student add events to a calendar, look at dates, days of the week things are going to happen, etc is a way to practice what a useful tool a calendar can be.
What is addition? Defining mathematical concepts is harder than you think. We not only practice different concepts, we work on really defining what math vocabulary means in our own words.
This week in Language Arts…
Ms. Eliza’s Group…
Our featured letters this week are (drum roll, please…) R and T. During our reading time we had a new basketful of ABC books and we discovered how fun they can be. Together we read Alphabreaths, LMNOPeas by Keith Baker and created our own alphabet peas!
We read ABC’s by Dr. Suess and afterward made our own fantastical beasts. We looked at Animalia by Graeme Base. We met our moveable alphabets and started making words (sam, tam, ram & rat, mat, and sat) from the letters we’ve learned so
far.
Uppercase and lowercase puzzle
Ms. Kim’s Group…
This week we read the classic, Make Way for Ducklings. We talked about how the setting in the story was a very important element it was almost as if it was an additional character, because everything the duck family did had something to do with where they were.
We read Stellaluna
…and practiced homing in on the most important part of the beginning, middle, and end parts of the story. We had such a great discussion; the Alphas thought that even though Stellaluna wound up being reunited with her mother, the story was really about being different and yet, remaining good friends.
