Kindernews From Blueberry II
February 21, 2012 #24 Ms. Nobusada
Special Thanks!
Hooray for Carla and Gerald who volunteered to drive on our trip to the SF
Opera Scene Shop! We have more than enough seats for our class now.
Thank you, Maria, for baking gluten free heart cookies for us on Valentine’s
day, bringing soy vanilla milk and making frosting so the children could each
frost their own treat to eat!
Our FOSS science program requires a lot of materials management. Thanks,
Kathi for helping separate and count out materials for the children to use!
Valentines’ day is always such a special treat for us because we can see how
much we truly like our classmates. Thank you everyone, for making this
Valentine’s Day so special. We thoroughly enjoyed opening and receiving our
cards and treats.
Thank you to Susan and Lynda, our art helpers, who graciously are
volunteering on Friday afternoons for art now that our old art time has
changed to music time with Mr. Schraft. Thanks, also to Kate for helping at
art time on Fridays.
Thank you, Pam for coming to our rescue at much needed outdoor choosing time
on Thursday afternoon.
IMPORTANT GENERAL INFORMATION:
Our spring conference week has been cut short by two days, and so conferences
will be held only on an as needed basis. I will be scheduling some, but not
all of you for conferences March 14th, 15th and 16th. Those days will be
minimum days for everyone. (Remember you can always contact me through email
for a check in conference.)
Classroom News
Language Arts
Our class reviewed the story of the Great Big Enormous Turnip and acted it
out with different characters all week. On Monday we reviewed the story of
Puff the Magic Dragon and everyone wrote their own versions with
illustrations. Tuesday and Wednesday we worked in small groups, decoding a
special and very challenging Valentine message, writing about 3 things we
love, completing our letters and sounds alphabet book, and making Timothy
Turtle for our ABC book. We are really beginning to read, read, read,
especially while Ms. Nobusada was continuing to assess. We are decoding more
and more.
It was great fun to READ our Valentine cards, thank our friends and work
together to be ready for our party!
Math
Our 100th day was too much fun and perfect weather for our inside activity.
We tried to be quiet for 100 seconds just to see how long it was. It
actually seemed very long to those of us who love to fidget and chat. : >)
We colored 100 balloons and wrote the numbers 10-100 by tens. Then we each
got a balloon which we had to keep in the air for 100 seconds. Phew. We
made necklaces and glasses to complete our look, earning a 100th day sticker
for doing our work for the past 100 days!
The 100th day projects shared were awesome! Each one was so cleverly and
carefully done. Thanks for helping support our counting by tens to 100!
We continued to learn about patterns, repeating patterns and growing
patterns. It is the most fun to create our own patterns!
Art
Besides making crowns for Valentines’ Day, and our 100th day glasses, we
began to make our quillow design. Look for it soon! We also began many
projects to be seen in the future! On Friday afternoon some of us painted,
had masks molded to our faces, and silhouettes drawn!
Music
With Mr. Schraft, our new music teacher, we enjoyed introducing ourselves
with music and movement, playing a pass-the-sound game, creative movement and
rhythms with shakers. With Ms. Verhoeven we enjoyed putting a new version of
Puff the Magic Dragon, authored by Sasha to music. Bennett was able to sing
the new verse to us.
Our song leader, Bennett, led us in several songs, including This Land (with
hand motions), and the good morning song in Hawaiian!
On Wednesday we saw the beginning of the opera, The Magic Flute. We were
introduced to two characters, the Prince, Tamino and the flamboyant bird! We
brainstormed questions to ask of our opera singers who visited us on Thursday.
Some of the many things we wondered were how they could sing that high, how
they could sing that loudly, when they learned to sing, why they became opera
singers, how the sets are built on stage, how they get dressed in costumes so
quickly and why they paint their faces when performing?
When Thursday came, we reviewed how to be a good audience and our favorite
parts of the presentation were: EVERYTHING! Listening to how high the
singers could sing and learning from them.
Science
Each week we continue to explore the properties of wood in a little different
way. We explored how to change the shape of wood, and what the difference is
between sawdust and shavings! We made our own “sandwich” or plywood, too.
It was fun to listen to rainforest stories at snack time. We learned more
about the different animals that live in the rainforest.
Social Studies
Our Peaceful Warrior chart is quickly accumulating stars. In a couple weeks,
you should be receiving a happy note! We listened to the story of The Secret
of The Peaceful Warrior, savoring and discussing each page.
Key questions:
1. What did you learn about opera singers this week?
2. What is a growing pattern? Show one.
3. Can you retell the story of the Great Enormous Turnip?
4. What is something an audience must do? What do you say if a female
performer does well? (brava) A male performer? (bravo)