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.

Nutrition and the First Thanksgiving

Happy Fun Friday! Today we began our new science unit on nutrition.  We watched a short video from Sid the Science Kid and discussed how different foods impact our bodies and minds. Then the girls brainstormed a list of foods that were both "good" and "not so good" for their bodies and collaborated together to determine how to sort each food. After that we read a Chris Butterworth book and discussed where all of our food comes from. We will continue to talk about nutrition and the different food groups throughout this month to get us ready for our favorite feast in a few weeks!

We also started our new social studies unit on The First Thanksgiving this week. First, as a class the girls discussed what they already know about the first thanksgiving, then we all talked about what we'd like to learn about it and what we will have learned by the end of the unit. We put our ideas into a chart so that we can keep track of everything that we learn in the coming weeks. The girls had some great ideas and a lot of prior knowledge! To finish up today's lesson on the first thanksgiving we read this book by Ann McGovern and started learning some things about the Native Americans, Pilgrims and their journey to a new home. Be sure to ask your daughters about what we've discussed so far!

Art_Designing Kinetic Sculptures

The girls have come a long way with their designs for their kinetic sculptures. They have made spinning spools and started to combine their bag of materials to make other moving parts. They spent one class drawing what they wanted their sculpture to look like. Some made notes about how they wanted it to work. Here are pictures of the designs and designers:

Short U and Number Lines

In language arts yesterday the girls reviewed the short u sound. We watched a short Starfall video, then matched up the short u words with pictures. Then as a group they  made a list of other short u words that they knew. After that, the girls returned to their seats to create suns with beams of short u words streaming out of them.

How can you make learning about number lines fun?  By adding a frog that hops along, of course!  The girls worked with number lines today to help them with addition sentences and develop their number sense. First we did a few problems using the number lines as a group, then the girls went back to their seats to work on a worksheet of addition sentences. Those who finished the first worksheet received an enrichment worksheet to try where they had to add 3 numbers together instead of two. We will continue to work with the number line throughout this math unit.

Fall Festivities

These last few weeks in Pre-First have been full of falling leaves, pumpkins, costumes and a few cases of the sniffles. We were so excited to be able to accompany the Kindergarten class on their trip to Rodgers Farm last week. All of the girls had a wonderful time picking pumpkins, riding on the hayride and of course playing on the awesome play equipment. Thank you to the families that could come with us; it was truly an awesome day! 

As usual, our annual Halloween parade was a huge success. The girls got to see their fellow lower school friends in their costumes during a parade around the Elementary Center before going on a parade around the entire school! For our class party, the girls got to make jack 'o' lantern treat bags, light-up pumpkins, there was an estimation station that each girl got to try, and the favorite of the day was a mummy wrap where the girls were put into pairs and they took turns wrapping each other like mummies. I think that the girls would all agree that the final person to be "mummified" was a big hit! :) A huge thank you to our class parents Amy Webb and Brian Woolf for providing the activities and as well as the yummy snacks for our girls! 

From the Library

Pre-first girls have been reading some good books about friendship (and twins) in Library.  We started off with Grace Lin’s Ling and Ting series. Ask your daughters how Ling and Ting are different from each other. We then read Rachel Vail’s new book Flabbersmashed About You, guessing first what “flabbersmashed" might mean. What does Katie do when her best friend Jennifer wants to play with someone else? We’ve just finished the Penny series, including the light-hearted Penny and her Doll and Penny and her Song, and the more serious Penny and her Marble. This led to an interesting discussion about what it means to take something that doesn’t belong to you, and how you might feel when this happens.

Girls have started to check books out of the library and take them home. They are encouraged to read their books to their goldfish, their grandmothers, and even their refrigerators. They are allowed to keep books up to four weeks. When the old book comes back to the library, a girl is allowed to check out another.