For math night, many students chose to work on number and clock riddles, as well as teaching their families a variety of Marcy Cook tile games. We enjoyed spending an evening devoted to math with you. The 1,000s projects on display in the depot received many accolades for how infused they were with facts, creativity, and of course, math!
The day after math night Temescal got another chance to peruse the 100s and 1,000s projects in The Depot and in kindergarten, but this time with an artistic focus. We sketched what caught our eye as being art, and then reflected on what art means to us. Some answers included:
“Art is something special to me. People think art is some quick sketch but to me it is something that takes a lot of time!”
“Art to me is a creation that you can only make the same thing one time. I also think art should be fun and meaningful . . . ”
In math it’s TIME to move onto to data collection and analysis. We will continue to assess and review time, and we encourage you to keep asking your child what time it is using an analog clock, and figuring out how much time will elapse in different real world scenerios. Moving from AM to PM is especially tricky. Also zoom out and have conversations about days, weeks, months, and years.
Those Berkeley library books you have hopefully renewed by now have been being put to good use in our local plant/animal research. We are in the midst of writing a draft of our field guides and showing our expertise in our own words and realistic, detailed illustrations.
In reading we continue to read and log our “just right” books, as well as our non-fiction books for research. We also finished The Cricket in Time Square together and read picture books to learn more about the Lunar New Year. Thank you to parents Sherry, Cheryl, Richard, and Tatiana for coming into the classroom on Friday so we could taste and experience more about this special celebration.
In writing workshop we worked on writing more about our 1,000s projects, and getting them to published form. During our research writing we noticed that it is challenging to take facts from a book and write them into our own words and in complete sentences without plagiarizing, so we thought about how we would share and explain our knowledge to a friend and approached are writing with that in mind. In cursive students have been introduced to the capital A and B. For Words Their Way and Wordly Wise we continue to sort words by spelling patterns or learn new vocabulary in small groups.
Thank you to the Temescal parents Sherry, Cheryl, Richard, and Tatiana for helping us celebrate the Lunar New Year with treats, artifacts, books, traditional clothing, and a red envelope for each for good luck!
Birthday celebration . . .
A couple more finished aprons and crazy hair and hats for Spirit Day on Friday!
Impromptu human knot on the playground . . .
Thank you, parents, for the flowers and classroom clean up! We really appreciate all you do.
