Week of 11/12

With Thanksgiving upon us next week, and our school Stone Soup Celebration on this coming Wednesday, 11/22, we have begun to wind down many of the projects that have been keeping us busy for weeks.

Our theme has been “The Farm,” and our family group projects revolve around this theme. On Wednesday, you will be able to see the fruits of everyone’s labor, and I’m very excited to see the final products. The kids have spent their afternoons working hard on their own individual (or group) projects, and I’ve seen them really find their stride with planning, research, and creation. On a daily basis, I now get the question “Do we have family groups today?” and on Thursdays or Fridays, when it’s not on the schedule, I’m met with a disappointed “Awww!”

This has been a very full week as we’ve continued with our regular morning academics of literacy and math, but have also introduced and begun work on the Stone Soup play that we will be performing next week. And of course, the story weaves itself well into our regular curriculum.

In math, the younger students have explored stones and sorted and counted them. The older students will be working more with stones and vegetables next week, and this week we have begun our look at place value. The 100s chart has been a valuable resource, and will continue to be central to our upcoming math lessons. An at-home 100s chart (very simple to print offline, and I’d be happy to help you find one!) would be a great home connection, so that students can observe, count, and look for numeric patterns on the chart.

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In literacy, we did our weekly word work with the phoneme -th, and the sight words "thank," "that," and "come." We partner read, and one popular center we have had for all students was to make stone soup – with words! Students made simple 3 letter words after putting letters in a pot and letting them cook for just a moment. We have also been reading many variations on the Stone Soup story, and have had wonderful conversations in comparing the texts: which story involves a stone, which involves a nail, which ingredients are in each version, which characters are the same or different.

Partner reading

Partner reading

If your child has a favorite fairy tale, it’s a fun idea to go to the library and find a few variations on the same tale: “Goldilocks and the 3 Bears,” “Cinderella,” and “Little Red Riding Hood” are just a few off the top of my head.

Speaking of libraries, we had the Book Mobile visit us! Many of the kids had their library cards, and we took card numbers so that they could check out books and bring them home. Even if your child does not have a library card, he or she was still able to check out a book under The Bridge School account, but these books will stay at school.

Additionally, we had a special visitor on Wednesday afternoon. A local storyteller came to our school to do a puppet show and tell a story about being kind to one another. The story involved a Native American legend about “how chipmunk got his stripes,” and the kids were able to interact by playing drums the storyteller brought in, and they explored the puppets after the show. Everyone was engaged by the storyteller, and it was fun to have the Earth room transformed into a theater for the school.

Practicing the Stone Soup song

Hope to see you all on Wednesday night, for Stone Soup!