Spanish: Churros

The girls had a blast today making Churros with chocolate.  Here is the recipe if you would like to try it at home.

Art_Rainforest Animals

Be on the look out for these rain forest animals at the Rain Forest Picnic on Thursday!

Spanish: Visit from Upper School students

Hola.  Today the Upper School Spanish 1 class came down to visit the Kindergarten and Pre-first girls.  The big girls brought books in Spanish that they had written and read them to the little girls.  Then the little girls showed the big girls a book we read in class earlier this week.  Each girl is bringing a copy of this book home today.  Here is a recording if your daughter would like to listen to the story as she looks through the book.

Spanish: Songs

The girls have had lots of fun learning Spanish songs this year.  Some of the girls asked if I could put links to some of the songs up on the blog so that they watch them at home so here they are. 

Billy la Bufanda story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cjV3gbex1E&t=23s

Billy la Bufanda song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBTGxLc-lv0

Somos como las flores: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNS2uloUydQ

A Mi Burro:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKkrMgGzN7E

Salta Salta:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBiFqDyAZGA

K-2 Spring Concert

https://youtu.be/fxWLysGtPbw

Marble Runs

Pre-firsters have been busy designing, building, testing, and revising their marble runs!

Spanish: Fun with Sock Puppets

The girls have been learning fruits and vegetables in Spanish.  They love feeding them to Lucia, and they are learning how to talk about which ones they like and which ones they do not like.  Yesterday we made puppet shows with the app Sock Puppets.  Here is a peek at a few of the girls.

Art_Marble Run Prototypes

This spring the girls are going to make marble runs in collaborative pairs using a collection of 3D materials like plastic tubes, paper towel rolls, yogurt cups, etc. The following videos show their individually made prototypes made of paper and tape. The challenge was to have a start and a finish and a path. The process was fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, SUCCEED! 

Empty Bowls

The pre-first girls are glazing their bowls for Empty Bowls. The Empty Bowls Dinner event is Thursday, February 15th from 5-7pm. It is a very popular community event, so sign up today! 

Hour of Code

This week, your daughter participated in the Hour of Code.  “The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries” (hourofcode.com).  We use this as an introduction to the programming your daughter will be doing throughout the year.  Learning the basics of programming reinforces problem solving and logic skills.

In Pre-First, we learned how to use basic directions (forward, turn left, turn right, jump, and light) to control Light Bot.  Next, we will learn how to use the Kodable app to learn more about programming and in the spring, we will use path to control the Dash robots!

If you would like your daughter to explore more at home, use this link.  Please note, different activities run on different devices and are appropriate for various ages.

Spanish: Fruits

The girls have been learning how to name fruits in Spanish.  Here they are playing a partner game where they have to find the fruit their partner names.

From the Library

Pre-first started off the year in library with an old favorite Good as New by Barbara Douglass, a story in which the wise, resourceful and patient grandparent helps skeptical young Grady fix his teddy bear after a run-in with a young cousin. In fact, Grady thinks the bear ends up better than new. Next up was Leslie Muir's C.R. Mudgeon, the story of a hedgehog who is a sensible creature of habit and his new neighbor, Paprika, who spices things up. We then read Kevin Henkes' Penny series. The third installment, Penny and her Marble, sparked an interesting discussion about finding, keeping and giving.

Next we read a couple of books in which part of the story is told in one half of the book, and then the reader flips the book over to get the rest of the story. Pre-first girls called these flip books. Crescent Dragonwagon's And then it Rained, tells the story of how all the inhabitants of an apartment building adjust to very hot weather, at first enjoying it and then wishing for rain and cooler weather. "To find out what happens next", we read half way through the book, "turn the book over". There we find And then the Sun Came Out, in which the same neighbors enjoy and then grow tired of the rain and wish for the sun to return. At the end of this section, we are again instructed to turn the book over to find out what happens next...

We followed this with Aliki's Marianthe's Story One: Painted Words. Marianthe moves to a new country and a new school with new children and a different language. She tells her story and her feelings through painting. When we turn the book over we find Story Two: Spoken Memories, in which Mari has learned a lot about her new world and can tell her life stories to her classmates in words.

The girls are now checking books out (they love to swipe the bar codes themselves) and taking them home. They agree to read to their goldfish, siblings, grandparents and friends. We've talked about how to take care of library books, how to remember to bring them back to school after they've read the book a few times. Thank you for encouraging your daughters to read.

Night at the Far, Spirit Day and Pecos Bill

This week we read another story by Donald Crews, our author of the month, and discussed the setting element of a story.  As they listened to Night at the Fair, the girls had to identify the setting of the story. I then paired the girls up and told them that they would be making setting dioramas based on Night at the Fair.  The girls were given a shoebox and a table full of supplies (sequins, mini pom-poms, construction paper, foam shapes, craft glue, etc.) and told to recreate a scene from the book. They were AMAZING--without specific directions, the girls used their creativity and own initiative to work cohesively to create their own setting. I was so impressed with their cooperation and imagination! Be sure to ask your daughters which setting they chose to recreate.

In Language Arts earlier this week the girls reviewed the short i sound.  As a group, we matched words with corresponding pictures. The girls then drew a pig (very similar to our beloved Wilbur in our current class read aloud, Charlotte's Web) and wrote 5 short i words inside of their pigs.

We'd like to send a big Pre First "THANK YOU!" to our Mystery Reader that came in on Wednesday! One PF girl was especially happy to see her :)

During Spirit Day yesterday we spent some time stenciling and decorating pumpkins to add to our Fall bulletin board. Please stop into the classroom if you can to check out the finishing touches!

We had a GREAT time welcoming the Morgan State University Band to campus for the Spirit Day Parade and I think it is safe to say that this was the highlight of yesterdays festivities! GO BRYN MAWR!

In math this week we have been discussing ordinal numbers and the difference between ordinal numbers and cardinal numbers. The girls are becoming very comfortable using the correct ordinal numbers for 1-10. Today the girls made daisies with ordinal numbers as the petals to practice what they've learned.

This week's engineering project was based on the tall tale of Pecos Bill.  The girls read several versions of his story this week, including this Steven Kellogg  book. Then your daughters were challenged to make a lasso out of 5 plastic bags. Once they created their lasso, they had to rope a "steer" (i.e. chair with an attached yard stick).  Again, I emphasized the importance of planning ahead and working together. Once they developed a plan as a group, they got right to work.

The end result consisted of plenty of lasso-ing! We've got some serious cowgirls on our hands!

Finally, please be sure to ask your daughters about our awesome assembly today with Uno, Dos, Tres Andres! Even Ms. Brooks got to be apart of the singing, dancing and Spanish speaking good time. I encourage you all to visit his Youtube channel so that your daughters can share all of the songs we learned today :)

123 Andres Visits Bryn Mawr

Happy Friday!  We started today with a fabulous assembly by 123 Andres, last year's winner of the Latin Grammy for Best Children's Album.  His albums are bilingual with songs in both English and Spanish and today the girls had a blast singing, dancing, and playing instruments with this dynamic performer.  We have already learned several of his songs in Spanish class and the girls love singing along.  If your daughter wants to see more of his videos, you can find them here. 

Short "e", Math Centers, Engineering and Founder's Day!

Hen, pet, men, peg...what do these words have in common?  They all contain the short e vowel sound.  This week we focused on this sound during our language arts period.  The girls were introduced to the sound by a fun video on the Starfall website--if you have a chance, check it out as it has a ton of great games, books, and videos that reinforce the different sounds and word families we will work on in our classroom.  After the video, we matched short e words with pictures and then the girls worked with a partner to sort "silly" vs "real" words with the short e sound.

In math, the girls worked in math centers that focused on reviewing and improving number sense, with a fall theme of course :) One was matching numbers, number words, and corresponding shapes. In another the girls had to match a pumpkin number, number word and corresponding ten frame. The third center was playing candy corn memory, where the girls had to find a number and number word matching set.  

We also had our first Engineering Challenge this week! The tall tale we focused on was Johnny Appleseed. Throughout the week I read several books aloud to the girls to give them some background knowledge on the history of Johnny Appleseed. Then, yesterday the girls became engineers! I gave them a problem: construct a raft using sticks, yarn and duck tape that can hold the weight of an apple without sinking.  The girls worked in groups to solve this problem. Their first step was to plan and design a raft on paper. 

After that, they gathered their materials and started constructing their rafts. I emphasized that problems often do not become resolved in the first attempt and it may take many improvements and tries before one finds a solution. The girls thoroughly enjoyed their first day as engineers and I encouraged them to try and solve this problem at home over the weekend. 

Finally, we might have just had the best Fun Friday in the history of Pre-First. This morning we got to watch the 5th grade girls work the catwalk in the annual French Fashion Show. After that, we walked up the hill to our Founders' Day celebration.  After the celebration, we attended the all-school picnic. The girls enjoyed either their own lunches or hot dogs, hamburgers, chips and the obligatory cupcake.  Our in-house faculty band, Edith Jamilton, provided an amazing after lunch concert that the girls danced along to. It was a fabulous day to be a Mawrtian!