Sea Life, Blankets, January Reading Challenge & Valentine Prep!

 This week we had another successful in Room 101. We have been working hard on our Sea Life books, learning about sea creatures and how we know they are not a fish. Last week we learned about characteristics of a fish and labeled a fish diagram. Usually in January we would be heading to the New England Aquarium to celebrate the end of this sea life unit. We hope at some point this year the aquarium will reopen and families will be able to take their children to see all the animals we learned about this month in person. We will take a virtual field trip this week to the NE Aquarium.

We also created our class quilts. We made two class patchwork quilts that will be hanging in the hall outside of our classroom. One is all our self-portraits and the other is about how we show kindness. We have been focusing on how to be kind through learning about Martin Luther King Jr. He was an amazing man who fought for equality through words, and we hope our students can emulate MLK and work to make our nation more equitable for all its citizens.

We also continued learning about each other's blankets. This week Mark, Patrick, Jordan and Giovanni. We have been measuring the length and width of the blankets and recognizing that most blankets are rectangle shaped. So far we have only had one square blanket.

We are ending our blanket unit and January Reading Challenge with a special reading day with our blankets, books and flashlights. We are hoping parents will join us virtually and read their favorite children's literature book to the class on Friday, January 29th. Please check your email for a special invite!

Valentine's Day is coming up soon! Please see reminder in homework folder. Remember class valentines and Special "Secret" Valentines are due into school by Friday, February 5th to allow time to quarantine before we open these items at our Valentine's Victorian Gathering on Friday, February 12th. We will all be dressing up FANCY for our Victorian Gathering. Thank you for your assistance with these items. We are trying to have some normalcy and fun in our kindergarten classroom. We have started to prepare for V-day. We made our mailboxes and frames so far! Next week we will make our place card for our gathering, create a v-day gift, and write about love.

Procedural Writing & Snowman Glyphs with our 4th Grade partners

This week we continued our work with procedural text. For the past couple weeks we have worked on How to Get Dressed in the Winter. This week we worked on our procedural writing on the steps to make a snowman. We met with our 4th grade partners and we created snowman glyphs with them. When creating the glyphs on the Drawing Pad app on the iPad the students were suppose to think about the procedural writing they have been working on, how to build a snow person and create the snow person on the iPad the same way. Snow on the ground first then, large snowball, then medium snowball then small snowball for the head. Then the students needed to add details according to the glyph. The last step was to add other details. Next time we get together we will share our class information and graph our results. We are hoping to have a snow day with our 4th grade partners and build our own snow people based on our procedural writing. We just need SNOW!

Patrick

 

Jake

  

Olivia

  

Mark

 

Myles

 

Giovanni

 

Lainey

Jordan

  

Elliott

 

Luke

Amelia

Ava

Keeping Warm this January!

 To begin the month of January, we will immerse the children in the multidisciplinary study BLANKETS AND QUILTS.  We will look at blankets, quilts and afghans.  During the long, cold winter months these items are a necessity in New England.  We will assign a date to each student to bring in and share their special quilt, blanket or afghan.  Please see calendar below with your child’s date to share their special item.

Please tell your child not to talk with their classmates about their special item because we will be playing a guessing game to see what we can find out before the unveiling! After we play the 20 questions game and the special item is revealed the student then asks a classmate to help with measuring their special item. We will be figuring out the length and width of these items using rods and we will analyze our data to decide what shape the items are. Students will be working in a cooperative groups creating paper quilts for each other.

So far we have looked at Lindsay's baby quilt (Mrs. Parnell's daughter), Olivia's blanket (Mrs. Kearney's daughter), Ava, Luke and Olivia's special blankets. We compared the items and estimated how much bigger or smaller the items were. So far the students have been doing a great job with their mathematical thinking.

The Mitten Retell

Before we left for the December break we learned about Jan Brett's story The Mitten. We read the story a few times, and we created our own mittens and cut out the animals that went into the mitten. We did a sequencing activity and practiced retelling the story in class. During our remote day after the December snow storm we also watched Ms. Pavlicek's Wednesday afternoon live stream on the story The Mitten. Please see the link below if you are interested in watching her program. We then challenged the kindergartens to do their third story retell and video record their story. We had many students try this challenge over the break. So proud of our students!

Jan Brett reading her story The Mitten.

Ms. Pavlicek's Livestream.

Room 101 virtually watching the Ms. P's video.

Patrick's Retell

Ava's Retell

Jake's Retell

Amelia's Retell Part 1

Amelia's Retell Part 2

Lainey's Retell

Luke's Retell

Holiday Wishes from Room 101

Thank you to our Amazing Room 101 Families! The video you all created made our day. We will miss you during our break too! Looking forward to seeing everyone in 2021. Enjoy the family time and we will get back to learning together soon. 

(Special thank you to our Room Parents for organizing this wonderful surprise.)