Hi JK Families!

What an amazing time we had at the museum today!!  I awakened saying, "thank goodness we didn't go to the zoo!"  It was the most perfect field trip, and absolutely age appropriate for each class.  Thank you to Nic, Paul and Shawntay for chaperoning!  And for you all for packing those fabulous lunches.

Besties!  (minus a few of the rest of the boys!)

We are still observing our amazing red ant friends as they build connecting tunnels and fascinate us with their work each night.  They have made a heart in the ant farm!  I  know it's because they love JK so much!

Language Arts:
We have been challenged beyond usual this week in reading groups as our ant books are level G books and are a stretch for everyone, along with Mother's Day RAZ books.  I love all of the information and pictures along with the more intricate plots, so we quickly made our way through those and then jumped back down to our more comfortable leveled readers that challenge us in all the right ways.  Continuous success when reading in groups is necessary to keep kids excited and motivated to continue learning to read.  Sometimes there are books beyond their reading levels we can also learn from, picking out the sight words and working on one or two compound words we decode and add to our list of "tough words".  I love exposing them to difficult things so when they meet them again they are familiar and are less apprehensive to try.

 "Greatest day ever!"

 Self face painting!

 Perfect for our Honey Bees Intro to next week's theme!  We completed a Venn diagram we will share with you all, but had to capture this perfect shirt on the same day I introduced Bees!

 We go on many bear hunts, and were climbing a tree in this photo!  They LOVE it when we see tarantulas on our travels!  

 Ant sculptures from foil!  

 Mother's Day gifts!  

 Our beans and grass are growing and thriving in our classroom!  

 We are experimenting to see if our bean stalks will follow the maze up!  

It looks like we will be switching to BOB books now in JK.  We have been using the RAZ (Reading A to Z) but are making a move to all BOB books reading.  If you see these come home with your student, they are the solid color books to look for.  Please read and return, as these are books we cannot print more of.

Each reading group is full of making predictions, taking story walks, using the pictures to figure out words that are unfamiliar, implementing reading strategies, and becoming more comfortable in the simple act of turning pages and following the text from top to bottom and left to right.  It's even more difficult to follow when you are not the person reading.  This challenge is a lofty one in JK but we are all working on it.

We have read many fun fiction books along with our continued non-fiction ant books.  We read classics like:  Math Curse, Yakyu (and sang the seventh inning stretch favorite!), The Honey Makers, Froggy Learns to Swim, Take Away the A, (followed by an amazing word game!), Extreme Insects, The Icky Bug, Ants!, and so many other amazing stories!

Follow this link for suggested reading over the summer.  I'll be sure to send a link before end of year for the Evanston Summer Reading Program. 

http://www.scsk12.org/schools/abhill.es/site/documents/SummerReadinglists2016.pdf

Math and Science:
Our Math center this week was created around the book, "Math Curse".  This book is such a fun way to challenge the children with real story problems and introduce them to many basic math concepts.  I love the page about fractions!  "We are just about to go home when Rebecca remembers the special birthday cupcakes her mom made.  There are 24 kids in the class.  Rebecca has 24 cupcakes.  So what's the problem.  Rebecca wants Mrs. Filbonacci to have a cupcake too.  Everyone is going crazy trying to figure out the problem and what fraction of a cupcake each person will get.  I'm the first to figure out the answer.  I raise my hand and tell Mrs. Fibonacci I'm allergic to cupcakes."

It's full of tales and riddles and the children all loved it.  They were able to have fun and listen to the stories while writing numbers on their white boards and practicing using the + and - signs to = answers.

We continued observing and documenting the plant growth in our classroom along with planting flowers for Mother's Day gifts.  I loved interviewing each child to see what was most special about their mom.  I already knew how special all of their moms are.  :)

Fine Motor/Art:
We worked more on drawing an ant and labeling the parts, along with using our fine motor skills to finish our own ant farms.   The children all used colored pencils to draw a picture of their moms for Mother's Day.  We also placed hand prints on Geranium plants for Mother's Day.

I led a guided sculpting exercise as we made ants from aluminum foil.  We began squeezing one long sheet into three parts for the head, thorax and abdomen.  It's always fun introducing new mediums for them to work with!  You can make art from anything! 

The children used stamps to make insect collages and labeled the different insects using inventive spelling or a list of insect photos/words.  Stamping is another great fine motor skill, paired with writing and coloring, offers a different way children may create.

Have a lovely Mother's Day weekend!

Ms. Massey

Hi JK Families!

We began our "Ants" theme this week, and are learning the parts of an ant's body along with multiple other facts.  We know there are over 800 different kinds of ants, and that there are ants that can dive, swim and live under water.  We learned that ants are extremely beneficial and turn over ten times more soil than an earthworm. 

Mrs. N and the instruments the children play are a highlight of their day!  They love the xylophones! 

 What green thumbs they have!  

 Our first attempt at determining which foods were preferred by ants was sabotaged by squirrels! 

 There's a chance I might have missed a few ants that almost crawled out of their tube, causing a scream and scary moment before we poured those into the ant farm. 

 JK LOVED the performance of Seussical Wednesday!  It was so much fun to see our reading buddies and other friends showing their talents. 

 Beautiful May Flowers on their calendars!  

 Ant farms.  Testing fine motor skills as they create their own tunnels for their ants (popcorn seeds)!  The children are also drawing ants and labeling the parts of an ant.

Math/Science:
We conducted an experiment using different kinds of food we left on a tray outside, to discover which were most preferred by ants.  We learned that ants liked the fruit (strawberry) and other sugar snacks (including cookies, milk duds, M&Ms, and frosting to the more salty snacks of gluten free pretzels and cheese).  Each student presented to the class on the parts of an ants body, pointing out the antennae, thorax, abdomen, head and legs.  We made a classroom chart about the things ants CAN, NEED, HAVE and EAT.  The most comical was reading about their favorite snack of aphid's sugary poop.

We are using seeds and flower pictures for a counting game this week.  Any items used as manipulatives help them understand the one to one correspondence.  We read "Remainder of One"

Our ant farm is providing daily entertainment as we watch the amazing insects create their tunnel system which in nature would allow the queen to lay many eggs a day and then house all of the larvae, pupae and eventually adult ants. These intricate systems are necessary for the eggs to all have their different compartments full of "food" provided by the worker ants.  Our ant farm was designed by NASA scientists to test ants in space.  The gel allows the ants to create their tunnels in the absence of the pull of gravity in space.  The gel is both their food and water.  They have also created an ant graveyard where they move all of the dead ants to clear their tunnels of bacteria. 

Language Arts:  We have added more words to our writing center and have also been working in our word books this week.  Spelling out names, including first, middle and last and finding things that begin with each, as well as saying each vowel and the different ways the vowels may sound.  We use "Flippy Dolphin" to try a different vowel sound if the first one didn't work. 

Our third grade reading buddies came to visit this week.  They read books with us and the children completed journals by coloring a scene or character from the story and writing about it. 

Fine Motor:
We made our own ant farms, carefully counting out how many ants we would have and then deciding to pair them or have them crawl in single file. 

The children used pom poms to decorate May calendars making bright colored May flowers!  They labeled their flowers using either inventive spelling or writing center words.  The coordination required holding a clothes pin is a bit different than the tripod hold when writing, so tested another skill as they painted. 

Regarding summer activities to avoid the "summer slip",  I am a big fan of visiting the library weekly if not more often.  It's a great time where you can find books in a new environment and take time to relax and read awhile while there, making it more interesting than at home.  Typically story and reading time only happens at bed time for JK and K kids, so the library is a great way to incorporate daytime reading!  Hunt for letters and letter sounds in words, challenge them to find words that begin and end with the same sound(s) and use reading strategies to decode words.  Look for signs as you are going places.  Count and write!  Set up a writing center and make it fun with books and gel pens etc.  Have them climb trees and do the monkey bars and peel oranges to develop their fine motor skill muscles.  Throwing and catching a ball helps with their reading and writing.  Balancing and walking on a "balance  beam" also helps with their reading and writing, by having them cross the midline. 

Have a great weekend!

Ms. Massey