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.
Add caption |
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!