Holiday Fun

Is anyone else feeling the holiday spirit? We sure are in Pre-First!  
Last week, we had a few Mystery Readers stop by! 

Including Ms. Burr's mom!

This morning we had a special guest visit us for a fun science experiment!  Check out your little mad scientists in action by clicking HERE! 

To conclude our gingerbread unit, the girls decorated their gingerbread people today!  As you can see, the sugar has already kicked in!

As the year ends, we think about all we are grateful for.  Teaching your daughters is one thing we treasure.   Happy holidays!

The Hour of Code

This week, we participated in The Hour of Code "a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries."  The girls used The Foos app by codeSpark to continue learning the basic of programming.  We compared this app to Kodable and discussed the similarities and differences across apps.  Upon completion, each student was award a certificate of completion.    


We have also been busy working on our Brush Bots.  Brush Bots are made by attaching a battery and vibrating motor to a toothbrush head.  All Bots will be competing in the Brush Bots Winter Olympics next week!

From the Library

Thirteen Ways to Raise a Nonreader

by Dean Schneider and Robin Smith
originally printed in the March/April 2001 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1. NEVER READ where your children can see you.

2. PUT A TV or COMPUTER in every room. Don't neglect the bedrooms and kitchen.

3. CORRECT YOUR CHILD every time she mispronounces a word.

4. SCHEDULE ACTIVITIES every day after school so your child will never be bored.

5. Once your child can read independently, THROW OUT the PICTURE BOOKS. They're for babies.

6. DON'T PLAY board games together. Too Dull.

7. Give little REWARDS for reading. STICKERS and plastic toys are nice. MONEY is even better.

8. Don't expect your children to enjoy reading. Kids' books are for TEACHING vocabulary, proper study habits, and good morals.

9. Buy only 40-watt bulbs for your lamps.

10. Under NO circumstances read your child the same book OVER and OVER. She heard it once, she should remember it.

11. Never allow your child to listen to BOOKS ON TAPE; that's cheating.

12. Make sure your kids only read books that are "challenging". EASY books are a complete WASTE OF TIME. That goes double for comic books and Mad magazine.

13. Absolutely, positively NO READING IN BED.

Gingerbread and New Author of the Month

We started our gingerbread unit this week and the girls have done a variety of activities with the books such as retelling a story and comparing two versions using a Venn diagram.  So far we have read The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Girl, and Gingerbread Friends.  We will continue to read and compare the different versions of this story.

Our new STAR presented her box on Monday and the girls were impressed with the details on her box.

We have a new Author of the Month in Pre-First.  She is from the land down under, she was raised in Africa, and is one of the best known authors in Australia.....she is Mem Fox!  The girls were excited to learn about our new author.  Today we read Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild and the girls discussed character development.  Make sure you ask your daughter what Harriet was like in the book.

Celebrating Winter

We continued to get into the winter spirit by reading a fun winter story and decorating our bulletin board with one of our favorite winter things...mugs of hot chocolate!  The girls adorned their mugs with snowy images and cotton ball marshmallows then described, in two sentences, why they like winter.  Their own little cups of hot chocolate helped inspire their creative juices.

We also had our second publishing party with the first grade.  The girls read their Halloween stories to several different groups of first graders who were truly impressed with the girls' writing skills.

My Snowman Melted...

Temperatures are dropping, there's a chill in the air and everyone is starting to get holiday fever.  We are getting in the winter spirit in our classroom and today we read The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.  After the story, the girls had to conference with a friend about a creative way their snowman would melt.  The girls headed back to their seats to make their own melted snowman.

We also had another special mystery reader today.  Pete the Cat was a big star today!

Subtraction

The girls began a new math unit on subtraction today.  We read the girls The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? to grab their attention, then used a cookie jar and cookies to model subtraction problems as a whole class.

The girls were given their own cookie jars and cookies to help them independently solve subtraction problems.  The girls enjoyed this lesson although they were slightly disappointed there were no actual cookies handed out.

French: Venez, venez Saint-Nicolas!

December 6th is a holiday in France known as St. Nicolas Day. Children put out les sabots (shoes) and St. Nicolas and his donkey come and fill them with goodies such as les clémentines (clementines), les pièces (coins), and les pains d'épices (gingerbread). 

Here, the girls are hard at work making their own sabots. 

They left them by the window for St. Nicolas along with letters and a carrot for his donkey. I bet St. Nicolas will pay Bryn Mawr a visit this Saturday! 

Code Talk

This month, each girl continued to work at her own pace in  Kodable.  Everyone learned how to use a color condition block and some even began learning how to use loops!  But we are not finished with our coding.  In December we will participate in the Hour of Code.  To learn more about the Hour of Code click here!

The girls have also continued to work on a holiday journal.  We wrote about what our families do to celebrate Thanksgiving.  

Thanksgiving Play

For your viewing enjoyment!  Have a great and safe Thanksgiving!

French: À la pêche

Today, there was a pond full of fish in the French classroom! The girls have been learning about numbers so each of the fish had a number written on it. Each girl took a turn catching a fish and if she could say the number written on the fish, it was hers to keep! They all did an excellent job and will be bringing home their "catches of the day" this evening. 

What Makes a Sentence & Nutrition

We have been incredibly busy in our classroom this week.  On Wednesday we had another Mystery Reader--a favorite story from yesterday was The Runaway Dinner.

Today we reviewed our CUPS poster to help the girls understand what makes a sentence.  As a whole group, the girls made complete sentences from words that had been cut up and scattered.  They had to make sure that each sentence started with a Capital letter, they Understood it, it had Punctuation at the end, and the words were Spaced evenly.  

The girls were then paired up and returned to their seats to sort phrases and sentences into two categories:   "sentence" and "not a sentence".

We began our new science unit on nutrition.  We read the book Me and My Amazing Body and discussed how different foods impact our bodies and minds.  The girls brainstormed a list of foods that were both "good choices" and "sometimes foods" for their bodies and collaborated together to determine how to sort each food.  

STAR of the Week and Addition Strategies

We have our first STAR of the Week!  The girls loved hearing about their friend's family and their likes and dislikes.  Needless to say, all of the girls are eager for their time as STAR.

We also had a special Mystery Reader today.  One of their favorite books was Little Pink Pup.  Be sure to check it out!

The girls have been working with number lines for the past two days and are becoming much more comfortable using them as another tool to help them solve addition problems.  Today the girls rotated around the room in centers, each center using a number line in a different way.  At the iPad center, the girls worked on the Mystery Numbers app.  At our second center the girls sequenced numbers and at our third center the girls solved addition problems using a number line.

Art: No Hearts; No Smiley Faces

The girls have started a painting unit in the easel room.  They will paint a series of opposites using line, shape, color, and texture to express the feelings.  They started with "scared" and "safe".  They discussed when they feel these feelings and then how they could show these feelings without using pictures of familiar things (like hearts and smiley faces). 

Here's a record of our discussion:

Here's a glimpse in process:

Halloween Week

Happy Halloween!

This week, the girls have enjoyed learning with a Halloween twist!  In language arts, our vocabulary words have included SpOoKy and HaUnTeD.  We read Room on the Broom and the girls made "oo" word spiders.

In Math, we have been working with a pumpkin!  The girls learned how to estimate various measurements of the pumpkin (weight, circumference, number of seeds) and had to guess if the pumpkin would sink or float. 

Happy Birthday to our new 6 year old!  Some special guests (her parents) came in to read a story in celebration of her big day!  

This week, as always, the girls loved receiving clues and trying to guess who was going to walk through the door Wednesday afternoon as our Mystery Reader! 

In Writer's Workshop this week, the girls have been working on their Halloween personal narratives.  The girls are becoming comfortable with the writing process and are adding more details to their pictures and sentences. 

In science, the girls are learning all about the human skeleton!  The girls are able to name the major bones and the function of each.  Ask your daughter what she would look like if she did not have a skeleton and how she created her name skeleton, shown below. 

Computer Programming

This month the girls began an introduction to computer programming by learning about Ada Lovelace.  In 1843, Ada Lovelace became known as the first computer programmer and predicted the future of technology.  During Ada Week, October 13-17th, we watched various short video clips and read articles about her life.  The girls then created a page in Scribble Press about Ada.   Now we are learning more about computer programming using an app called Kodable.