Week of 11/5

 I hope you all had as good a week as we did at school!

Taking advantage of the presidential election, we were able to connect our classroom to current events, as well as have the older kids from the Rainforest Room come join us to present their math project. On Monday and Tuesday, the Rainforest Room presented to the rest of the school their newfound knowledge about elections and the president of the United States of America. They even held a Bridge School election poll, and each student had the chance to cast his or her choice for our next president. In the process, we all got to look at some very fancy graphs, talk about percentages, and learn a bit about sets of data.

We also had a special guest come in: on Wednesday, we had a Darigold dairy farmer and the Dairy Ambassador for Washington State come in and talk all about dairy farms. The discussion also lead to nutrition, food, cows in general, and what happens on a dairy farm.

The Iceberg Snow Leopard Room (which is the given name of where our Kindergarteners and first graders mostly work) was busy this week with projects. It’s exciting to watch the kids hook into a project that reflects their individual interests, and then keep the momentum going for days at a time. During our afternoon family group time, we are winding up our farm-related projects, and will be ready to present in just two short weeks. Some of the kids have stuck with their original ideas, and some have chose to diverge their paths a bit, as new questions or interests came up. Everything will be on display by Thanksgiving, and I can’t wait to see the creative and thorough projects that come from this!

Literacy time has also been a place where students have found engaging projects to work on. Writing plays are a trend for the first graders, and with a just a touch of support and direction, many are on their way to full-scale productions. We continued our phonics work with studying words that end in –at and –ap, or words that contain the phoneme –ng. New sight words we are learning are “come,” “that,” and “are.” Letter and sound recognition are an ongoing theme for many of the younger students, and their activities during center time help to foster these foundational skills.

Our math time (Investigations) has been spent continuing pattern work, as well as collecting data and figuring out how to represent that data. The kids have gotten a brief introduction to Microsoft Excel, as a means to creating graphs digitally. The younger students have also been working on math centers, with a new center to help support recognition of numerical symbols: they have been forming numbers out of playdough.

During the Kindergarten Investigations time, we’ve been having some very interesting mathematical conversation. The concept of infinity has been a popular topic (and believe me, they initiated that one!), as well as the concept of zero. One way to discuss math at home might be to bring up these words, and just see what comes of it. Some of the kids are already formulating some fascinating mathematical theorems!

This week, we’ve also started a new rotation of clubs on Thursday afternoon. The kids have chosen their clubs this time, and we have a cooking club, theater club, sewing club, and Pokemon club.

Finally, thank you to everyone who attended our parent meeting this week. I hope it was helpful and offered some practicable information for inside the classroom. It was great to see everyone in the same room.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Week of 10/29

Happy November!

This week we celebrated Halloween and Dia De Los Muertos, and while we were rained out of our Oxbow Farm field trip, we still investigated quite a bit.

Pumpkins were a topic of exploration this week: we read stories about pumpkins, learned pumpkin songs, measured and weighed pumpkins (and learned what “circumference” means), tested how well different pumpkins rolled, estimated the number of seeds in a pumpkin, and – of course – we cut some pumpkins open. This one theme extended to areas of literacy, math, science, and problem solving.

In literacy, we also did our weekly word work (phonics), practiced verbal storytelling, and learned more about the process of brainstorming for stories. The words we build this week followed the pattern of ending in 
--ug and --un as well as words that end in the phoneme --ng.

Students also explored various letters and sounds centers, including a center for creating letters out of pretzel dough (which were later baked and eaten, of course!) and names out of blocks. 

Our math time continued with pattern work, estimation, and also collecting data and then organizing it in a manner that could then be analyzed (asking how many students do like bubble gum and then working on a making a chart of this information).

Family Group time continues with projects based on our theme of The Farm. It’s exciting to see the kids forge forward with their research, discovering answers to their questions, and then figuring out how to share that information with others. Over the course of research, many groups have begun asking new questions as they spring up, and then investigating the answers to those.

The national news of Hurricane Sandy, as well as our rained-out farm trip, brought up the question of floods in our group: how floods occur, what happens during a flood, what the aftermath of a flood looks like. Hearing students as young as five and six years old discuss current events and ask questions about those events was amazing, and this discussion brought up even more cross-curricular connections.

One very important process we went through this week was the process of coming up with classroom agreements and then deciding on the consequences that occur when those agreements are broken. We had large group conversations, small group brainstorming, and we modeled proper and improper behavior in the classroom. This information is posted in all of our classrooms, and a great at-home follow up would be to engage your child in a conversation about the agreements, and what they mean to our school community. 

Week of 10/22 (one more thing)

I just had to share this image with you all.  Max spent the recess directing students in creating a pile of leaves that would reach all the way to the tree branches.  Given more time I think they would have made it!

Week of 10/22

Hello Families!  

We had an amazing week!   Teacher Christie has been working with small groups on word work and the writing process.  Teacher Andrea is working on concepts of print (what is the cover?  What is a title? Which direction does text run?  What is the difference between a letter and a word?)  

Students also practiced sequencing a story as they re-enacted the building of the scarecrow in The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything, after having read the book.

An impromptu create-your-own Pokemon center sprang up during the morning.  These boys were stretching out words and writing the letters that represent them to label their Pokemon creations.

We also read Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss.  Afterwards, students were invited to create their own pages for a class Apples on Top book.

Younger students continued their work on patterns.  On Wednesday, older students extended their work on gathering data by polling younger students on the question  "How many seeds are in an apple?"

Wednesday Afternoon was especially exciting.  We had a guest speaker come in and answer the question, "What's inside a pig?"  This question was generated by a couple students during our family group project work.  The speaker was fun and the kids had tons of questions for him.  I think just about about every child now knows where we get ham from...the pigs butt!

After our pig talk, Melissa Bookwalter (a.k.a. Emmett's Mom) brought in a cider press and help lead the students in making apple cider.

Wash the Apples

Cut the apples into small pieces

Grind the pieces and put them in the press

The kids were totally into the whole process and the final result was delicious!

See you on Monday for more fun and learning!

Week of 10/15

Before talking about what we did this week, there are a couple of announcements for next week:

Thursday, 10/25 is our Community Open House at The Bridge School. In preparation for this event, our school is going to  press cider on Wednesday. If you happen to have a surplus of apples, or even just one or two, please drop them off to the basket we will have handy. Thank you!

This past week, the younger students continued their work on patterns during our Investigations time. We predicted how the beginnings of patterns would continue, we recorded patterns that we made with linking cubes, and we observed the different parts of a given pattern – the repeating parts.

The first grade students have also continued their more in-depth pattern exploration, as well as work on the “Count to 1000 club.” They are using base 10 blocks to build upon their numbers, and the scrolls of numbers they are creating are quite impressive.  

In Language Arts, the first grade students have begun to work on more focused literacy-based projects during their centers time. Some of the projects include: responding about challenging books to read, creating written missions for a treasure hunt, building a paper dollhouse to act as the foundation for stories, and creating their own Mad Libs story. We worked on our phonics sounds by building words from word families. One group looked at words ending in “-en” and “-et” while another group looked at words containing the digraph “-sh.” We also have been working on the sight words “they,” “all,” “like,” and “know.” On Thursday, we brainstormed and wrote sentences beginning with “I like.” Another ongoing focus is on parts of speech: nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

The Kindergarten students have been busy exploring their literacy centers, which include forming letters with clay, building letters with blocks, writing their own mini-books, and practicing writing their letters in shaving cream. Songs are a large part of learning their letters and letter sounds. Another focus has been on the format of a book; for example, what the cover is and its purpose, what the title is, where the name of the author is written.

Our multi-age family groups are continuing to sift through the topic of “The Farm.” This week, we looked at the long list of farm-related questions that arose, and divided these questions into categories – bugs, vegetables, flowers, vehicles, seeds, infrastructure, etc. Then, each student chose which category was most interesting to him or her. Our next steps will be to figure out how to answer the questions we’ve come up with, then after that, go out and work on answering them.

One method of answering these answers is to ask an expert (something the kids decided was a valid path), and this week, we welcomed an expert into the classroom to talk about how chickens lay eggs. This was one student-generated question, and our resident chicken expert, Melissa Bookwalter, brought in her Buff Orpington, Gloria, to help explain more about chickens.

Other subjects that we worked on this week were Pea Patch, where we made and observed terrariums; Explorers outdoor education; Spanish, where we just finished our unit on El Cuerpo (or, the body); art; music; Physical Education; Studio Thinking with Teacher Maura.

Here are some games and ideas for connecting school to home:

-Mad Libs are a great way to continue learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. We will be doing a round of Halloween Mad Libs this coming week, but the more the better.

-Go on a noun scavenger hunt. Write down all of the nouns that you can find in a given room in your house (the list might get pretty long, though!). You can also add some adjectives to the nouns you have found to describe what they look, sound, taste, or feel like.

-Apple picking with the family is really fun, but it’s also a great conversation starter about the various varieties of apples, how apple trees grow, what can be made with apples. It’s also a good segue into our cider pressing this week.

-Have a calendar in your home that is visible to your child. You can talk about the day of the week, what the date is, count down to upcoming events, or even just mention that it’s still the season of autumn.

Have a wonderful weekend!

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!