Famous Friday
10/26/2019
Sharing what we love with others is always an exciting thing! Every week, we have a time during our closing meeting for a famous classmate to share their favorite things with us. Famous Friday has numerous benefits for your children. These early language experiences help to build effective communication and listening skills that are essential for a young child's learning. It helps them strengthen their language and communication skills with a subject that is easy to talk about, their favorite things! The kids are given the option to pass around their items to the rest of the class. We practice being respectful of the presenters items by handling them gently and being respectful of the the speaker by using our listening ears. We always say thank you to our Famous Friday friend for allowing us to see and play with their personal items. This is a time the kids look forward to every week. I decided to pick one child a week so that they could have their time to feel special. Famous refers to someone who is celebrated and renowned, just like each and every one of our classmates.
Greetings from Otter Space
10/19/2019
The school wide space theme called for guests from NASA, astronaut training, a space-themed sensory bin, and of course all kinds of space activities! Thank you so much to everyone who came out to our space event on Thursday! I hope you got to see all of the projects the students created, try some Tang, and see our guest speaker Sue, an engineer from NASA. Our sensory bin this week consisted of kinetic sand, astronaut figures, and "moon rocks". It was put on display at our space night event on Thursday for everyone to enjoy. Mr. Rich brought real moon rocks and pieces of meteors to show our class. We also got to see rocks from Earth that look exactly like rocks that would be on the moon! Mr. Rich also brought a piece of a rocket engine to share with us. It was such a rare and awesome experience for all of us! Ms. Sue taught us about the suits that astronauts wear on their way to space, and the suits they change into when they are ready to exit their shuttle. It was an interactive experience that allowed the kids to try on gloves, put on a space helmet, and touch a suit that has been worn by an astronaut. Using artwork created by the students, we assembled Space Ship O.T.T.E.R. One of our resources at PNA includes a Tech Den, in which we found a green screen to show off our Space Otters! We also created rocket ships out of shapes and the letters of our name! Both projects were displayed at our space night for the community to see! We used sugar cookies and icing to create moon cookies! First, we used our spoons to create craters, then we took bites into our cookies to show each phase of the moon. A full cookie meant a full moon! We learned new vocabulary words like gibbous and crescent, all from eating cookies! We practiced fine motor skills this week with painting and building! We used marbles to paint planets, gold paint to fill the dark sky with stars, and magnatiles & geometric blocks to create rocket ships. By the end of the week we were able to fill up a whole page of chart paper with what we had learned about space. The planets were fun, but it didn't compare to learning that astronauts have to essentially wear diapers to space! We had such a blast with this theme!
Reading Buddies
10/9/2019
Reading Buddies is a concept that pairs different grade-level classrooms for community reading time. This week we began a Reading Buddies partnership with the third graders at PNA! It will occur every Tuesday before nap time. Whole group read alouds are a great way for me to introduce a topic, expand on knowledge the students already have, and share my love of literature. However, when the read alouds become one on one, they become more personalized. Having the third graders read aloud allows our students to see what being a fluent reader looks like as they have a peer model demonstrating reading skills. The older students benefit from the interaction as well, as they develop social and emotional skills like patience and empathy as they work with their buddies. Reading aloud:
One of my favorite benefits of this partnership is that each child is enjoying a fun, positive experience with a ‘big kid’ who is now a recognizable face in the school community. Not only are they creating a relationship with the other child, but they are also creating a relationship with literacy. Fostering a love for reading is at the core of why the Beginners class has started Reading Buddies.
Laying Down Roots
10/5/2019
“It is in the roots, not the branches, that a tree’s greatest strength lies.” |
Annalee JohnsonEK Teacher Archives
January 2021
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