We have dubbed the week leading up to Valentine’s Day as “Friendship Week”. Each Temescalian pulled a name out of a basket and found different ways to show his/her “Secret Pal” small acts of kindness on the sly. To be extra secretive, Temescalians were encouraged to be kind to many different people so that no one would be able to guess their Secret Pal. This fostered a culture of sharing and caring this week, and really emphasized the ways one can show friendship. This activity seemed to knit our community closer together. We enjoyed delivering, receiving, and writing notes to our Secret Pals, as well as helping out whenever we could. At the end of the week, we decorated cookies for our Secret Pal and shared talents and good characteristics of the Secret Pal before we revealed who our Secret Pal was and deliver the cookie we had decorated for him/her. “My Secret Pal is loyal, friendly, and never gives up.” “My Secret Pal likes to play four square and is very helpful. She tried to help out whenever she can.” “What I like about my Secret Pal is that we both like art.” Naming different qualities and talents our Secret Pals have really helped us notice our fellow Temescalians, and perhaps build more connection within our community.
Adding to the sweetness of sharing heartfelt appreciations for one another, we learned how to make toffee! A Temescalian’s parent came in and led us in a cooking experience. Toffee is simply sugar, butter, a bit of salt, and a dash of vanilla! Caramel is a burnt version of toffee while brittle is toffee with the addition of baking soda. We noticed that the brittle was “foamy” and “like glass”. During the cooking experience, we saw and tasted the sugar at different temperatures throughout the process and as the sugar was heated for longer, it looked darker and tasted sweeter. A favorite part of the entire experience was pouring chocolate bits on top of the hot toffee and spreading it out. The chocolate melted surprisingly quickly and became very easy to spread.
In the vein of sharing the sweetness of friendship, the Temescalians gave their 7th grade buddies Valentines and a baggie of toffee, chocolate covered toffee, and brittle. The Temescalians were eager to share this toothsome treat with their buddies, and also gave their buddies handmade Valentines.
We started our Time unit and applied our understanding of fractions and multiples of 5 to reading a clock. Our goal is to be able to read time to the minute, as well as calculating elapsed time. In our initial exploration and review of the face of a clock, Temescalians noticed, “The face of the clock is split into quarters.” “Each of the quarters is in the 3 fact family – 3, 6, 9, 12.” “You skip count by 5 to figure out the minutes.”
With the help of fantastic parent volunteers, we were able to finish our apron project! Thanks again, grownups! They turned out so well! The Temescalians are very excited about their handiwork, and we are so proud of their patience and perseverance.
We had the fortune of celebrating a birthday this week. We had a great time sharing appreciations, asking his expert panel questions, and sharing a birthday treat together. The birthday boy’s whole family joined us for the celebration, and it was so much fun entertaining the youngest one while also comparing the birthday boy’s baby pictures with his sisters.
We also celebrated the 100th Day of School on Friday! We are 100 days smarter! We had free writing activities that asked kids what they would want for their 100th birthday presents and what they would do with $100. It was fun hearing their imaginations go wild with these possibilities.
We have established the focus of mindfulness as a way to notice what’s going on inside of our minds and bodies. This week, we took a different approach to connect the Zones of Regulation with Mindfulness. In one activity, we pretended we were seaweed experiencing a storm. When the storm was far away, we were calm and “green zone.” As the storm approached, we imagined what it would feel like as seaweed in the water and how the increasingly turbulent water could be connected to the “yellow zone” and “red zone”. As we thrashed our arms about as seaweed in a storm, we also noticed how our bodies were affected by the zone. Perhaps our heart rates were going up, perhaps we couldn’t hear the direction during the Mindfulness. But as we pretended that the storm passed, we too needed to calm our seaweed bodies, and this was an exercise of going from “yellow zone” to “green zone” both in our imagination as well as physically in the moment. We shared tips on how to do this after the experience – breathing and focusing on the teacher’s voice.
It has been a full week of all sorts of learning experiences. We hope you have a wonderful week off!
We’ll see you back at school on Monday, 2/23 with your 1,000s projects!
Oh, and don’t forget to renew your Berkeley Public Library books before Thursday! (You can check this post for images of the books that require renewal. http://blogs.theberkeleyschool.org/temescal/2015/01/31/learning-abounds/ )
