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: