Happy Holidays!

It's hard to believe that it is already that time of year but yet here we are! We hope everyone enjoyed our Winter Concert last week and thank you to those who came, as well as to those who supplied goodies for our fun party afterward! We'd also like to thank our last Mystery Reader of 2016, Adam Herb, who brought in some great winter books and even lit a fire for us to cozy up to on this chilly morning :)

It has truly been a joy teaching your daughters this year. I feel extremely fortunate to start my elementary teaching journey here at BMS. I look forward to seeing you all next year and I wish you the happiest of holidays!

Concert Photo courtesy of The Bryn Mawr School:

 

Then the after party!

Our last Mystery Reader of 2016 cozied up by the fire with us!

Mem Fox, Gingerbread and Snowmen

Even though our winter break is only 5 days away, we are still working hard in Pre First! In Author Study we read a new Mem Fox book: Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild! and then the girls discussed character development. Be sure to ask your daughters what Harriet was like in the book.

To wrap up our Gingerbread unit we first did a fun math lesson using cutout gingerbread people to measure various distances and lengths around the room. 

Then for our last gingerbread activity we read The Gingerbread Boy. Next as a class we talked about who else the Gingerbread Boy might run into and after that each girl drew a picture of who she would have the Gingerbread Boy run by if she could add a page to the book. 

With the talk of a snowy front approaching, we did another fun winter activity and read a winter book to get us in the mood, then the girls created their own winter snowmen using marshmallows. It was quite a tasty lesson :)

  

Subtraction, CUPS, and Winter Fun

The girls began a new math unit on subtraction last week.  We read The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? to grab their attention, then used a cookie jar and cookies to model subtraction problems as a whole class. We will continue to work on subtraction problems and learn different strategies for solving them.

What Makes a sentence?

We focused on how to make good sentences this week during language arts.  The girls were introduced to the acronym CUPS to help them form and determine the characteristics of 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 then returned to their seats to sort phrases and sentences into two categories:   "sentence" and "not a sentence".

December is in full swing and we can tell that winter is right around the corner.  To continue to get into the spirit, we read a fun winter story and decorated our bulletin board with one of our favorite winter things...mugs of hot chocolate!  The girls adorned their mugs with snowy images then described why they like winter.  Their own little cup of hot chocolate helped inspire their creative juices.

Gingerbread Fun & a Mystery Reader

We have been incredibly busy in the Pre-First classroom recently.  We started our unit on Gingerbread at the beginning of the month and the girls have enjoyed reading all of the different versions of the Gingerbread Man books and completing various activities. Here are the activities we've completed so far:

For our first gingerbread activity we read the classic Gingerbread Man story, and then the girls were partnered up and had to sequence the story according to each obstacle that the brave Gingerbread Man faced.

The next story we read was The Gingerbread Girl and then we talked about the differences and similarities between her story and the Gingerbread Man's story. To organize our thoughts better, we put our ideas into a Venn Diagram and we practiced using a Venn Diagram on a topic we are all familiar with first :)

We have also been hard at work on gingerbread decorations for the past few days. First we made the dough using flour, salt, water and a little cinnamon. Then we baked it for a few hours and let them cool.

The next step was to paint them with acrylic paint and once that paint dried, we put the finishing touches on them--lots of glitter, puffy paint, and pompom balls etc . They will be ready to go home today so be sure to help your daughter find a place for her gingerbread decoration!

Even though we had a ton of fun making the beautiful decorations to hang in a special place in our homes, I think our favorite gingerbread activity was decorating our gingerbread cookies! We'd like to send a big thank you to all of the parents who sent in supplies for this activity and a special THANK YOU to Mrs. Barbara Woolf for coming in and helping us with our sugary creations!

Lastly, thank you to our most recent Mystery Reader Sidney Frazier for coming in and sharing some of our favorite books with us!

Better Late than Never: Thanksgiving Fun!

This post is long overdue, however the delay was due to technical difficulties uploading the Thanksgiving Play video. Despite our best efforts, the play is still waiting to be uploaded but the posts must go on! To recap: we had a great day, starting with a visit from our grandparents and special friends. The girls put on their first Thanksgiving play, next they completed a worksheet with their grandparents/special friends comparing the first Thanksgiving to the one that they celebrate today, then put their knowledge of the french language on display, and finally learned a new app with our wonderful Technology teacher Mrs. Caruso. We had quite the morning!

After our visitors left, we prepared for our Thanksgiving Feast! A HUGE thank you to the parent volunteers Kate Stratton, Anne Puckett, and Corina Fratila---who helped to facilitate our Thanksgiving feast.  The girls' plates were loaded up with foods from all the food groups and they enjoyed their Thanksgiving fare.  Many thanks also must go to all of the parents who contributed wonderful dishes to our feast.

French: Saint Nicolas est venu!

Le Jour de Saint Nicolas, or St. Nicholas Day, is a widely celebrated holiday in France. Children put out les sabots (shoes) and Saint Nicolas and his donkey come and fill them with goodies such as les clémentines (clementines), les pièces (coins), and les pains d'épices (gingerbread).

In Pre-First, the girls made their very own sabots and left them at Bryn Mawr overnight for Saint Nicolas to find. He did not disappoint and brought many exciting treats! Merci, Saint Nicolas!

WINTER CONCERT

Come one, come all!

Please join us for the Winter Concert for students in grades K-2 next Friday, December 16!  The concert begins at 8:30 am and will end by around 9:10.

Each and every student participates in this performance!  The Pre-First girls will be on the risers on the floor on the right side of the stage as you are facing it.

Attire for the concert is as follows:
• Split top uniform, skort, jumper, or gray pants
• Dark green or gray tights or knee socks (no leggings or white socks)
• White long sleeve turtleneck or polo shirt (no sweaters – the girls will be warm enough under the bright lights!)

See you there!

Pre-First and The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

The Kindergarten and Pre-First girls enjoyed a wonderful concert by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra!  In this winter-themed program, the featured piece was a viewing of The Snowman movie with live orchestra accompaniment.  We were sitting in the third row, which gave us an incredible view of the 10 year old violin soloist for the Allegro in the Winter section of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi.  She was inspiring!

Catching up in Pre First: Publishing Party, Mem Fox and Winter Fun

Since the Thanksgiving break there has been a lot happening in Pre First! Since your daughters all finished their first personal narratives that they have been working on in Writers Worksop, we had our very first publishing party. Your daughters shared their stories in front of the entire 1st grade and they did an amazing job!

We have a new Author of the Month in Pre-First.  She is from the land down under, but she was raised in Africa, and is one of the best known authors in Australia.....she is Mem Fox!  The girls were so excited to learn about our new author.  We read Possum Magic and went to Mem Fox's website and watched a video to learn all about her.  In the next few weeks, we will be reading more books that Mem Fox has written and complete a variety of activities.

FInally, in Pre First we have noticed that 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 this week we read The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.  After the story, the girls made a list as a class of various creative ways their snowman would melt.  Then the girls headed back to their seats to make their own melted snowman. Be sure to ask your daughter how she said her snowman (or snow-woman) melted!

Thanksgiving and Nutrition

Today was another eventful day in Pre First--- this morning we continued to prepare for Grandparents and Special Friends Day by practicing our First Thanksgiving Play (without our scripts!). Then in preparation for our Thanksgiving Feast extravaganza, the girls made placemats for the tables. A turkey was the main focus of the placemat, but in place of feathers, the girls used leaves. It was a gorgeous morning for a leaf walk!

Then as we wrap up our science unit on Nutrition and the different food groups, we did a fun lesson focused on the dairy food group today and made butter! It was a very simple process and the girls had a great time! We first reviewed what we knew about the dairy food group and then we got straight to work. The finished product was (surprisingly) delicious and we all enjoyed the fruits of our labor spread upon toast as a reward for all of our hard work :)

Special visitors & First Thanksgiving

The girls have been LOVING our social studies unit about the First Thanksgiving.  They have been working hard with the Scribble Press app on their iPads, creating interesting journal entries depicting different events that the pilgrims experienced. 

As you know, we are getting ready for our Grandparents' Day play.  Here they are painting the setting of our play.

We also were fortunate enough to host the lovely Mrs. Wilgis (1/2 of the party responsible for Ms. Brooks being at Bryn Mawr!!) last week and tell her all about the wonderful things that are happening in Pre First. Thank you so much for everything Mrs. Wilgis and for visiting our class! We'd also like to thank Valerie Carpenter aka "Mimi" for being our Mystery Reader this week. The girls really enjoyed the stories you brought in!

Catching Up: Election Day, Nutrition & Writer's Workshop

Last week, in honor of Election Day, the entire Lower School held an election of our own. Each girl from K-5 had to vote on whether they wanted to have a day out of uniform on Friday November 18th or a surprise recess given by their homeroom teachers. We got the results by the end of the week and a day out of uniform won by a land slide! In pre first we discussed that some of us would be happy with the results and some of us would not, just like in our presidential election, but that we should always taking voting seriously and be proud of our decisions. 

The girls in their "voting booths" :)

One very excited Prefirster casting her vote.

USA! USA!

As we continue to talk about Nutrition in our science unit, your daughters are learning more and more about each food group. We watched a short video on how to "choose your plate" of foods that are good for you and only having those "not so good foods" every so often since they are not as good for our bodies. After the video we reviewed the list that we made of good vs. not so good foods and then the girls did a food sort with a partner. We are becoming experts at the different food groups!

In Writer's Workshop the girls have been working really hard on editing their personal narrative stories. We have been using everything that we have learned in language arts (finger spacing, vowel sounds, etc.) and we are also using our class rubric to help us through the final steps of editing our books. As of last week everyone has finished their first book so we are set to schedule a publishing party with another grade!

As always, at the end of our Writer's Workshop period we had time for one of our pre first authors to share her story with her friends.