Week of 10/8

It’s been a busy week here at The Bridge School with our Kindergarteners and First Graders. At the end of this post, look for some home connections (games, conversations) I’ve added that relate to what we’ve done this week, and will be doing in future weeks.

Wednesday was a great day, as many of us (and you, of course) drove up to Seattle Center to the Children’s Theater to see “The Cat in the Hat.” The kids seemed to have a great time, and I know I did, too: I was really impressed with how your kids acted as audience members at the theater, and how much they were able to express about the experience later.

We’ve been reading many Dr. Seuss books and discussing rhyme. “The Lorax” was one particular book we read as a whole school, and reading that led to a great discussion about trees and planting, and how to keep the earth healthy. One of our older students suggested that, together, we plant a tree seed.

In Language Arts, the older (first grade level) students have been working on building words as they practice letter sounds and letter blends. Different levels worked on different sounds: words that in “-op” and “-ot,” or words that contain the consonant blends “cr-,” “br-,” “tr-,” “pr-“ and “dr-.“This is our phonics work, and it’s a very helpful building block in expanding on reading skills. Daily reading is a part of Language Arts for all students, and journal writing has been very popular this week during centers time. Making our own books has also been a hit amongst all of the students. Though picture drawing is a part of many of these books, so are the words: parents have been writing down the dictation of students’ stories to accompany their pictures. Other center work for the first graders include building words with letter tiles, sight word bingo, forming letters and words with playdough, and reading aloud to Kindergarteners.

For the first graders, we are really making a transition to focused work with words, through reading, writing, and storytelling. I am taking students in small groups each day to work on different skills: this week, we read aloud at different levels, we worked on phonics, and we learned about nouns, adjectives, and verbs. To help us practice, we finished a Mad Libs story together as a class, and the kids asked when we could do that again! Next week, we will be talking about different projects that each child can find to do during center time, or extend out of the classroom. Some ideas we’ve come up with so far are: write and perform a play, use nonfiction books to research an animal, write a book of poetry (rhyming words), create a book of mazes and write out clues.

In math, the younger students have cemented a routine of math related activities: we count off how many we are using an attendance stick made of linking cubes; we look at the calendar and talk about the concept of day, week, month, and season; and we do many math read-alouds. We also have been doing some direct work with patterns: learning what a pattern is, going on a pattern hunt, and creating our own patterns with math tools. The older students have also been working with patterns, but at a more advanced level. Several students have also begun work on a “Count to 1000 Club.”

Our family group time is still dedicated to the farm. This week, we spent a good amount of time thinking about questions: to begin with, though, we looked at what makes a question, and what question words are. We also began coming up with our own questions about farm-related topics that interest us. Some of the topics are: compost, corn, worms, tractors, rain, vegetables, cows, fences.

We also are in the middle of our weekly clubs, taking place on Thursday afternoons. Right now, the kids have chosen to take part in either a cooking club, a theater games club, a Lego club, or a Harry Potter club. Next week we’ll be thinking about what kinds of clubs the kids might be interested in doing next!

On Friday, the first graders participated in Studio Thinking Workshop with Teacher Maura. The Kindergarten students did Language Arts – an older student came in to read with some younger kids – as well as Show and Tell and Open Classroom, which involved putting together our new school worm bin!

If you are interested, here are some connections from this week that you can make at home:

-Talk about farms and any aspects of the farm that you might know about. Ask your child what they find interesting, or what they might want to learn more about.

-Look for patterns around the house or out in the community. Depending on your child’s level, the patterns may be very basic, or very complex. You can also try making patterns with words!

-For first graders, begin talking about larger reading or storytelling projects that might be fun. It’s easy to bring in elements of reading and writing, once the kid’s are interested in a topic.

-As your child tells you a story, write it down. If your child is writing his or her own sentences, you might write down their words again anyway, if they are just starting to read their own writing.

-A couple of games we learned this week:

“What’s missing” is a great brain game. You begin with a set of 8-12 objects and have your child observe the set. Then ask them to close their eyes while you remove 1 object. Your child will then figure out which object was removed. To make it more challenging, try taking away 2-3 objects at a time.

“Letter Pictionary” is a fun letters and sound game. On a sheet of paper, write down a letter. Then begin drawing something that begins with that letter, as your child tries to guess what you are drawing. If you’ve written down the letter “B,” and are drawing a bear, and your child guesses “cat,” you can remind him or her that the letter is “B;” does “cat” begin with a “B” sound? What does?

Thanks so much for sharing your children with us, and sharing your time in the classroom! Have a wonderful weekend!