Wilma Rudolph

Determined. Brave.  Amazing.  These are just three of the words that your daughters used to describe Wilma Rudolph, our first famous female we studied in our latest social studies unit on Women in History.  We read the book Wilma Unlimited and discussed everything that Wilma had to overcome in order to be labeled the fastest woman on earth.  After we read the story, we brainstormed our favorite facts about her and made our own gold medals. 

100th Day!

We celebrated our 100th day of school!  The girls walked into our room this morning through streamers, with "Celebrate" by Kool & the Gang as their soundtrack.  Our day was filled with different activities, all centered around the number 100.  Take a look below to see how Pre-First celebrated.

Here is our sign we decorated and hung in our window for the entire lower school to enjoy!

We took a picture of the girls and used the app Aging Booth to fast forward time and get an image of what the girls will look like when they are 100.  The girls--and their teachers--got a huge kick out of seeing each other as 100 year old ladies.  They then wrote about what they will look like, what they will be doing and where they will live when they turn 100.  This was, by far, their favorite activity of the day.

100 Chart--the girls had to color in certain numbers on their 100 chart to create a picture.  Make sure you ask them what it was!

100 dots--the girls used 10 different paint colors to make groupings of 10 Q-tip dots.

 



100 Exercises--the girls did 6 different exercises, each exercise was a 100 count.  Some of the exercises were jumping jacks, twists and hops.  Needless to say, there were a lot of water breaks taken during this center.

 

 



100 Cup Structure--the girls were given 100 cups and had to build a structure out of them.  This was one of their favorite centers, make sure you ask your daughter what her structure looked like!

Celebrating Tet and shape centers

Maia's mom, Leslie, came in today to celebrate the Vietnamese holiday of Tet.  The girls loved Maia's traditional outfit and could not get over the time difference between Baltimore and Vietnam.  Make sure you ask your daughter in which animal year they were born!

 

The girls also worked in math centers today, which focused on the different 2-D shapes we have been learning.  At one center, the girls used tangrams to solve puzzles.  This was incredibly difficult for the girls as it forced them to think "outside the box" and use their problem solving skills.

 

At another center, the girls played a game on our computers where they had to sort the shapes in an allotted time.

 

The third center focused on creating pictures using pattern blocks. 

 

 

shhhhhhh...we're starting digraphs

We began teaching the girls digraphs today and started with the "sh" sound.  The girls first read a story called, "Shelly's Shell Shop," and went on a word hunt to find all of the sh words (be on the lookout for the book in their backpacks).

Afterwards, the girls used shells to write the digraph "sh" on their papers and brainstormed as many sh words as they could, using 4-6 on their paper.

Frozen Food

We have started our new unit in science on hibernation.  The girls received their animals that they are going to research and are VERY excited to create and present their dioramas.  Yesterday, we did an experiment on reasons why some animals hibernate in the winter.  The girls were given fresh pieces of pineapple and were given the green light to go ahead and eat them.  We talked about how they smelled, what they tasted like and how easy it was to bite in and eat it.  Then they were given pineapple frozen in ice.  They had to attempt to get to the pineapple and eat it--the girls discovered that this was not an easy task.  As they were gnawing their way through the ice, we talked about how difficult it was to actually get the food out and how hard it must be for animals to find food in the winter.  The girls realized, at the end of the experiment, that one reason some animals hibernate in the winter was the difficulty to find and eat food.  It is not easy to smell, reach or eat...but your girls had a ton of fun discovering this:-)