Ms Aja's Classroom

Last Day

2010-06-16T00:37:29Z

It was a bittersweet day. We had a lot of fun reminiscing about our year and savoring our last moments as the 2009-2010 Whales Community. We started the morning by releasing our Monarch butterflies, which emerged from their chrysalides last week. We took last photos with our teachers and spent time enjoying our outdoor learning space with friends. We got our classroom ready for next year’s Whales by cleaning out our cubbies and putting away our centers. In the afternoon we gathered as a whole school community to watch a slideshow that Ms. Shelley put together of our year. The slideshow contained photos from all the classes and was set to songs that we sang in our music making sessions this year. We ended the year by writing a letter to next year’s class. We figured they might be nervous about kindergarten, just like we were at the beginning of the year. Here is our letter:

Dear New Whales,
Don’t worry- kinder is fun. At the end of the year you will get memory books. Don’t worry- there’s lots of toys to play with. You will make new friends. Your teachers are nice.
Love,
The Old Whales

Dear Whales,
Thank you for all the wonderful memories. Each and every one of you made our community a happier, better place to be. This year you made me laugh every single day and your smiles brightened my life. You also gave so much love to my new baby. You sang her songs and gave her tummy rubs; always hoping for a kick. I hope that you come back next year and visit me and my new baby. I will miss you very, very much. Have a fabulous summer!
Love,
Ms. Aja

View more photos in our New Photos Gallery

Happy Birthday Ronin

2010-06-16T00:28:41Z

Yesterday we celebrated our last birthday of the year. Happy Birthday, Ronin! We are so happy that you are a part of our classroom community.

View more photos in our New Photos Gallery.

Closure Activities

2010-06-12T06:03:31Z

It’s hard to believe that it’s already June and almost time to say good-bye. This week we have been engaging in a variety of closure activities. These activities allow students to reflect on the memories we’ve created this year and begin to process the fact that our time as the 2009-2010 Whales is coming to an end. This week we reread several stories that we read the first week of school. We even reread The Night Before Kindergarten. We discussed the anticipation we felt as we started the year. We discussed how we feel now as the school year is coming to a close.

This week we also spent time pouring over our memory books. We laughed and reminisced as we admired our stories, art, and photos from this year.

We admired our classroom displays and discussed how our classroom became a second home to us this year. Today we took down all of our art and began getting our classroom ready for the new and old students who will make up next year’s Whales class.

We were delighted to see several families at our Celebration of Learning. Students were so thrilled to show their families around their school. It was a wonderful opportunity for students and families to reflect on learning and participate in learning activities.

View more photos in our May 24-June 7 Photo Gallery
View more photos in our New Photos Gallery This gallery contains all the new photos taken from Tuesday, June 8-June 15 . These photos were NOT included on the Memory Book Photo DVDs.

Summer Birthdays

2010-06-12T05:57:20Z

We have been busy celebrating our summer birthdays this week. Happy Birthday Ewan, Brendan, Jack, and Lola. We are so glad that we got to celebrate with you!

This Week’s Highlights

2010-06-12T05:26:09Z

Several students have been very interested in baseball lately. Last week students started negotiating teams and writing team rosters. Then Michael brought in a bat and ball from his home so that we could have a game. We decided that a metal bat was too dangerous for school so we had a problem-solving meeting. All the baseball players met to discuss possible solutions. We all drew and wrote our solutions and held animated discussions to decide how to proceed. Students decided to make the metal bat safer by taping a towel around the bat. We tried this solution on Monday. On Tuesday we tried using a large cardboard tube as a bat. Players decided that using the cardboard tube worked best and we have enjoyed playing baseball this week.

On Tuesday we had our last Music Maker Session. We sang, played instruments, and moved our bodies. Thank you for all the wonderful music making memories this year, Ms. Shelley! We have learned so much from you.

We had our last meeting with big buddies this week. Of course we enjoyed reading special stories with our buddies. Then we spent time in our outdoor piazza playing with our buddies. We gave our buddies special cards that we made and exchanged hugs and good-byes. We learned so much from our buddies and shared many special memories. We will miss them very much.

Today Ms. Stephanie brought in a Bingo game for us to play. Bingo was a great way for us to practice our math skills. We had to read and recognize numbers from 1 to 75! We also got better at reading and tracking numbers along columns. Thanks Ms. Stephanie!

This week we tried to get outside any time the sun peeked out from behind the clouds!

Brendans Message

2010-06-08T20:50:10Z

Today’s Blog Message
Written By Brendan
“Dear Families,
Today we did a project in the classroom. We were glittering on popsicle sticks. We made letters for our buddies.”

Happy Birthday Ewan

2010-06-04T20:54:34Z

Dear Families,
Ewan’s birthday was today. We had donuts and they were so yummy. I just wanted another one. We didn’t have atelier today. We made salad and ate it. It was good.
Love,
Lola

Migration Museum

2010-06-03T22:12:41Z

We have taken a hiatus from our blog the last few days because we have been so busy finishing up our plant unit and getting ready for the end of the school year. It’s hard to believe that it’s already June! Today our big buddies came to visit us. Our big buddies have been learning about migration and different species of animals that migrate. They have been working hard to prepare museum exhibits and presentations about migration. Today they brought their museum exhibits to us! They set up temporary migration exhibits in Berglund complete with costumes, posters, and other props. Big buddy tour guides showed us around the museum in groups of three. We got to hear a variety of presentations and see several different exhibits. Our buddy partnership with the Community School has proved to be beneficial for both us and our big buddies this year. Today the big buddies benefited from getting to present and share their knowledge with others. They had to think about ways to present their information that were engaging and developmentally appropriate for kinders, in addition to answering any questions that students had. The kinders enjoyed learning new facts about animals and appreciated seeing how scientists display their findings. Thank you, Merlins!

View more photos in our June 1-4 Photo Gallery

Game Day

2010-05-24T22:04:47Z

Friday we had game day. We all brought in favorite games and puzzles from home. Then we taught our friends how to play our special games. We also got to have a guest PE teacher come in to do physical movement activities with us. Since it was raining we used the covered tennis courts to do relays, exercises, and movement games. Thank you Ms. Stephanie and Mr. John.

View more photos from Friday in our May 17-21 Photo Gallery

Buddy Readers

2010-05-21T04:21:22Z

Our buddies visited us today. We got to spend time reading special stories with our big buddies. We also worked with our buddies to write diamante poems.

View more photos in our May 17-21 Photo Gallery

Planting the Rainbow Garden

2010-05-21T04:04:10Z

We were thrilled to welcome Petey back on Wednesday. He brought lots of shells and rocks back from his beach trip for us to examine. He even found a starfish!

On Wednesday we released our Cabbage White Butterflies in the butterfly garden. They especially loved the lupin.

We have also been busy planting our Rainbow Garden. All of the classes at the ELC are working together to plant this rainbow garden. We will post more photos when the garden is complete.

We watched a video called “Characteristics of Plants”. The video talked about plant life cycles, different species of plants, and photosynthesis. We also watched a time lapse video of a bean plant growing.

Several students have been busy in the Creation Station this week. Check out Kaleb’s eyepatch.

We used digital microscopes to examine and photograph plants. We have also been observing the growth of our lima beans this week.

View more photos in our May 17-21 Photo Gallery

Music Makers

2010-05-18T21:38:51Z

Daily Blog Message
Written By Joaquin
Dear Families,
We have Monarch caterpillars. Kaleb bring a lego sticker book. We had music today, and Ms. Shelley bringed a bag of veggies for our song. Jack bringed a Star Wars sticker book. Some of us painted a surprise.
Love,
Joaquin

Today we had a music making session with Ms. Shelley. We sang Mary Wore Her Red Dress while gracefully moving the scarves through space. We also sang John the Rabbit, Don Alfredo, and This Little Light of Mine .

In the atelier the second half of the class read Painting a Rainbow, examined plants, and painted a particular plant for the rainbow garden. Tomorrow we will begin planting our garden!

VIew more photos from today in our May 17-21 Photo Gallery

Painting Flowers

2010-05-17T22:37:38Z

Last week in atelier we used paints, tagboard, and scissors to create our own plant puzzles. Today we got to play with our puzzles. We figured out how to put together our own puzzle and then we tried our friends’ puzzles.

Our afternoon schedule has changed and now half of the class visits the atelier to work on a guided art/science project while the other half the class enjoys reading book boxes and library books in the classroom. The following day the groups switch. Last week the ELC community decided to use the empty garden plot (photographed below) to plant a rainbow garden. Today for our art and science activity we began planning our rainbow garden. We read a story called Planting a Rainbow. Then we used magnifying glasses to examine plants in a variety of colors. After examining our plants we each painted a realistic picture of the plant that we would like to add to our community rainbow garden. Tomorrow the other half of the class will examine and paint plants. Then on Wednesday we will actually plant our community rainbow garden.

View more photos from today in our May 17-21 Photo Gallery

Last Week Highlights

2010-05-17T22:08:32Z

Here are some of the highlights from last week:

We explored the scientific properties of bubbles. Several inventors invented their own bubble wands. Others found ways to create bubbles in their hands by getting their hands wet and soapy.

Ewan’s dog, Elliott came in to visit us. It was great to spend special time with Ewan’s mom and with Elliott.

We created labels for the different vegetation in our butterfly garden.

We watched several Painted Lady butterflies emerge from their chrysalises last week. On Friday we released the butterflies in our butterfly garden.

During centers we played a plant memory game where we matched scientific vocabulary with pictures. We had to use both our memory and concentration skills, and our decoding skills to play this game.

A few of us worked on planting vegetables in our kinder community garden. We planted onions, radishes, carrots, broccoli, and tomato plants. We also watered plants around our outside learning area.

During Writers’ Workshop we worked on writing individual stories. We discussed how to find our best learning spots during writing time and as a class we decided to listen to classical music during Writers’ Workshop. We enjoyed listening to music and creating our own stories!

View more photos from last week in our May 10-14 Photo Gallery

Music Makers

2010-05-12T22:22:25Z

Daily Blog Message
Written By Brendan
“Yesterday we played with Legos in Creative Play. We were taking a video with a video camera of our chrysalises because we wanted to see if any of them hatched. And some of them hatched and now we have four Painted Lady butterflies.”

Every day we spend time engaged at classroom centers. A popular new center has been Monopoly. Monopoly involves students buying property and exchanging money. It has been a powerful way for students to practice their math skills. They are especially becoming more skilled at making change and adding sums of money.

Yesterday we had music with Ms. Shelley. We sang a Spanish song about body parts and we also got to make music with the shakers.

For the past four weeks in Writers’ Workshop we have been focusing on writing scientific research reports and memory book piecs. This week students were very excited to return to a focus on writing personal stories. Ask your child what he/she is writing about this week.

We have been enjoying the beautiful sunshine in our outdoor classroom.

View more photos from this week in our May 10-14 Photo Gallery