Good morning JK parents!

Happy New Year to you all!  We have begun studying penguins this week.  The children are so excited to learn about these fascinating birds.  We are also thrilled to welcome a new student to JK!  The children have all loved playing and learning with Daniel.  What a great addition to our classroom.

Math & Science:
In this center we conducted an experiment using Crisco to insulate our hands while comparing our bare hands submerged in ice water to a hand surrounded by Crisco.  We made predictions about what would happen and which hand would stay warmer, as well as discussing all of the ways penguins keep themselves "warm" in the frigid temperatures of Antarctica.  We discussed warm weather penguins living in the Galapagos Islands.  They were all reminded of Happy Feet!

We managed to fit in some Star Wars Yoga too!  Their balance and concentrations is incredible.  Feel free to you tube it and try it at home.  They all enjoy it. 

We will continue to actively learn about penguins as we move, sing, play, question, role play, color, draw, paint, create, etc. If children are not talking and participating, the material they are studying is not as meaningful.  They have to have a way to relate to penguins by relating the new information to things they already know (scaffolded learning).  Many loved hearing of the way penguins slide down hills just like we sled.  They were not thrilled about learning the babies eat food that has been regurgitated by their mother.  There is actually a tiny pocket in the back of the male penguins throat that makes a milk like substance that the penguins live off of until the female penguins come back from their two months away.  We practiced trying to waddle with an egg held on our feet like the male penguins do.  It is so funny watching the determination as they try to hold the egg and not let it fall on the "ice".  The children made a chart identifying what a penguin CAN, HAS and IS.  We responsively discussed.

Each student worked in pairs to measure themselves with connector blocks and wooden blocks, comparing their height to that of a Little Blue and Emperor penguin we have on our wall.  This process required many different skills of finding the beginning and ending point to measure, using non-standard units to measure, counting these different units, negotiating with friends about how they would measure and who would go first, comparisons of bigger, smaller, equal to, number writing and recognition, etc.  I love interactive exercises.  The conversations were lovely.

Language Arts:
Reading groups are again in full swing as we read through our RAZ books. We continue reading our chapter book as a class while we hunt for letters, letter sounds, and sight words.  We are still all grasping the concept of "stretchy snake" while we try to identify each sound of each word.  I began testing children using our ESGI tool, while they "played games with me" and allowed me to gather more details about their progress.  This has to be done in stages for four and five year olds, to get accurate accounts, so will take the next month or so to assess.  Please come in anytime in the morning before 8:15 and I am happy to share your child's progress with you.  The next parent teacher conferences will be here before long.  If you are unable to make it to scheduled times, I am happy to meet at your convenience!  I am with your children each day so enjoy sharing the different things they experience in the classroom you might not see at home.  Ask me questions and feel free ANYTIME to come visit!

The children wrote, dictated and illustrated a journal page answering "If I Were a Penguin".  Most said they would fly, like the main character in "The Penguin Who Wanted to Fly".  They used inventive spelling to label/dictate/write their sentences/pictures.  We also read, The Emperor's Egg, Polar Wildlife, Five Little Penguins Slipping on the Ice, Penguins Scholastic, The Penguin Book Penguin Pete, Ahoy!, One Cool Friend, and Be Yourself Little Penguin.  I like to vary fiction and non-fiction books.  Please ask them to tell you about penguins and ask them questions like, "are birds?"  Ask them if they can fly.  Ask them what they eat and where they live and how they have fun.  They love to share their knowledge!  They should all know at least a few different names of penguins.  (Macaroni still being the favorite, or Little Blue which is the smallest, and of course the Emperor which is the largest penguin in the world.)

Fine Arts:
The children all used their fingerprints to decorate their January calendars.  Some went for the understated snow scenes and some labeled the parts of the calendar and tree along with creating their own snow blizzards!  The great thing about differentiated learning is that the students are able to create different projects based on their comfort level, abilities and interests, with many additions for those who are ready for more.  Our learning differentiation was great in our penguin study too.  Some children wanted to learn more about the blubber and water and buoyancy and some children were more interested in studying the different types of penguins and how the colors and markings allow us to tell them apart.  Some children were interested in the regions of penguin populations, and looking at all of the Southern Hemisphere areas where penguins live.  All levels of interest were satisfied in this first week of our exploration.  We continued making snowmen and adding to our writing center with more post office supplies for sending letters to classmates.

We celebrated another classmate's birthday, and welcomed Aeriana's mom in to read a favorite story of hers.  Thank you for the delicious treats!  We have seven five-year-olds in JK now!

We discussed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the contributions he made to our lives today.  We read Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by Acorn books, and watched videos about MLK Jr. and his life.  We talked about what it means to be equal in opportunities and treatment, and how we are different on the outside but the same on the inside.  (Simple explanations are a great starting point, and allowing the children's questions to guide these discussions ensures they are meaningful in an age-appropriate way.)  We discussed ways to honor Martin Luther King Junior, by helping our community, neighbors, and intentionally doing our part for his dream of all people living together in peace.

Enjoy your weekend, and stay warm!

Ms. Massey

Good afternoon JK Families!

We are so excited for our Gingerbread Party Friday!  What a great way to end 2017!  The older kids will come to our classroom to accompany our class to Wassail that afternoon.  There they will make blankets for donations and have hot cocoa and cookies.  It's such a great experience for everyone, and allows the JK children to take part in a much larger service project than we can do alone.

They LOVED the Gingerbread hunt, as we chased those cookies all over the school based on their clues they left for us!  What a great party we had!  Thank you so much for all of your help, and all of the lovely gifts and cards!  I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, and I know Ms. Liubin and Mr. Bailey feel the same. 

Literacy, Math, Fine Arts, Science:
We have been practicing our writing and reading strategies (like stretchy snake and chunky monkey) along with making fun gifts to take home for the holidays this week.  The children also designed ice skates and decorated them with colorful glitter and markers.  They all split into groups and read Jingle Bells, sang many versions of the song, and then completed a group collage/coloring depicting scenes from the story.  I love the collaboration of group art projects!  We have been hunting for shapes throughout the classroom and making comparisons and categorizing things according to size, color and texture.  We have been playing a math game with dice and stamps locating numbers once rolled, then writing our numbers 1-20 (or 30 depending on abilities).

As the year 2017 comes to a close, we are all seeing the independence the children have developed in their problem solving and ability to communicate successfully and kindly.  We have replaced many words with kinder words, and found better ways to express ourselves with clarity.  We have looked for ways to be helpful and caring to our friends and teachers.  The children have all grown immensely in their academics including their letter sounds and recognition, reading/decoding/awareness, shape recognition (including 3 D shapes), math skills (patterning, counting, number recognition, sorting, sequencing, simple addition and subtraction with and without manipulatives, science knowledge and vocabularies, art appreciation and skills, etc. etc.   I am extremely excited about their progress and where they are at this point in the school year.  We will continue to stretch their imaginations and build upon their foundational skills, along with (and most importantly) their character development in becoming wonderful citizens.  I have heard over and over again for 9 years now at parent teacher conferences, that as happy as parents are with the strides their children make in JK with their academics, the most important to parents is that they are kind young people.  We definitely have that in this classroom without exception.  I am so loving this class!

Lila and I will be seeing Hamilton, ice skating at Lincoln Park Zoo, dining with friends, visiting Winter Wonderfest at Navy Pier, and finding the many things Chicago has to offer through this holiday season.  She is so much fun to spend time with, so really even seeing (or watching at home) a moving and laughing through dinner are such a joy.

Have a lovely, magical, safe, meaningful, relaxing, energizing, inspiring holiday season.  See you in 2018!  If you are skating at the zoo or enjoying zoo lights in Lincoln Park, text me and we might just meet you there!  I have loved seeing some of you out and about!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!!! 

Ms. Massey

Good afternoon JK Families!

This week we continued our Gingerbread theme and discovered many new stories about all of the Gingerbread man's friends! 

 Counting, sorting, writing, and categorizing are so much more fun with friends!

 Letter sounds and filling in the missing letter!

 I love building things and wishing Lightening McQueen were really here with me!

 Reading together is so much fun!  Taking picture walks and telling our own stories is wonderful!

 Our mittens with inventive spelling words. 

Measuring, mixing, rolling, cutting, baking, cooling, decorating, repeat!  So fun! 

They are coloring in the missing items of the snowman as they learn the Spanish words for all of the extra items of clothing they need now that Winter is here! 

 Practicing colors in Spanish also provides pattern practice and sequencing! 

 They ALL love their Word Books!  They ask to do them each day.  It's so fun for me to see them writing and illustrating the pages and feeling so grown up as they diligently work through them. 

 The children are learning beats and notes as they build a foundation for reading music. 

Fine Motor/Literacy:
We designed Mittens after reading "The Mitten", and used inventive spelling to describe what we feel when we put our mittens on our hands.  The children colored, cut and then wrote their words on their mittens.  "Coze" was one of my favorite spellings, and "wmis" for "warmish".  We talk about the characters and settings in the stories and what we think will happen next.  We also hunt for letters and words as we read.  We are making some presents for you for the holiday, so have also been working on those in our fine motor/art center.  They are so cute and wonderful.  I hope you love them as much as I do!  The children are excited to share them with you! 

We worked in our word books, had group reading, individual reading, individual sign in, letter sounds group songs and dancing, fill in the letter center, and writing pages.  Writing practice remains interesting if we are constantly offering different tools, mediums, and ways to write and practice our letters and numbers.  We work on our writing tripod grip daily as well.  I am an avid student of the research for everything early childhood, so have read many articles lately about grippers for pencils, size of pencils and crayons, and what is the most beneficial for developing a proper tripod hold.  The most important thing to remember is to work on the hold and not get hung up on the device you are using to write.  Many articles recommend using regular size pencils because the chubby pencils provide too much space between the index finger and thumb and cause children to have too tight of a grip applying too much pressure, which effects their handwriting abilities.  Short (golf) pencils are great to limit the space available and encouraging less fingers on the pencil.  Grippers are sometimes helpful but in most cases are recommended by OT when a child has severe writing problems and the physical issues are causing them difficulty with being able to even hold a pencil.  Transitioning between chubby pencils and regular pencils is typically not necessary if you begin writing with regular pencils, ensuring the pressure applied when writing is not different.  Also, grippers can be uncomfortable, so when used should always be comfortable and not restrict normal range of motion while writing.  Also, when a child is not developmentally ready to hold a pencil they should not be expected to develop proper tripod grip.  The gripper will not make a difference in this instance.  Grippers that that are soft and do not restrict movement uncomfortably, but provide a fun and different spin to an ordinary pencil may encourage writing, which is always a positive.  Mixing up the different colors of pencils and markers, providing every medium for practicing writing, coloring and drawing are great ways to keep children interested.  I love writing centers with stamps, markers, crayons, lined paper, colored paper, words to copy and magazines to cut and paste. 

And just when you thought I was finished, here is a link to an older article but quite interesting about pencil grip. 
https://www.oepf.org/VTAids/Handwriting.pdf

Math/Science:
We made a surprise with cinnamon salt dough, measuring each ingredient carefully and discussing the difference between wet and dry ingredients.  The measuring cup is different for wet and dry ingredients, and it was fun watching them process why one would be better than the other for flour or water.  Cooking and baking always provides multiple opportunities for comparisons of more or less than, as well as temperature/numbers and counting while we time our baking. 

The children did another "turn and talk" math game where they responsively count to 100 with a buddy.  It's a fun and exciting way to practice numbers and allows children to be leaders as well as learn from their peers when they are stuck.  It provides the safety of practicing with a friend so mistakes are shared, and the socialization of compromising when they are unsure and deciding where to begin again.  I love "turn and talks" as a tool for teaching and introducing higher level thinking concepts. 

We have begun discussing coins, and how much each coin is worth.  This is new for  most all of the students, and is typically (at other schools) a skill introduced in Kindergarten.  Some children are becoming familiar with coin recognition, but are learning the amounts of each.  I love to introduce concepts so they are familiar and the for some children their interest level will lead them to more in depth study at this time.  For others, they will be familiar later when they study currency and have the advantage of it being a familiar concept. 

We have worked to show acts of kindness and build the Grinch's heart this week.  It's nice to introduce new motivators throughout the year.  They are all excited to build their rainbows, but providing an additional element is fun. 

Our higher level thinking and the gifted model incorporated into our everyday curriculum continues as the children answered all kinds of questions about themselves and made comparisons to their peers.  All of my classes have had many opportunities to explore questions that are typically reserved for older children, but the amazing uninhibited thought processes of four and five year old children remains my favorite for just this reason.  I remember a class a few years ago answering my question about the age old, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?"  It is just amazing to hear the reasoning of, "of course the chicken had to come first because he had to lay the egg", to them turning to, "well, that chicken was laid by an egg so the egg was just put there, so of course the egg came first!" 

We will be baking Gingerbread cookies on Friday, and (if you are not already familiar with the scavenger hunt) we will be looking for the cookies around the school if they happen to run away!  It's such an amazing and fun day for the children, full of wander and excitement, and a lovely way to end the year before a long break.  I will miss them and will look forward to introducing them to the world of penguins when we return. 

Happiest of holidays to you all if I do not see you this next week!  And Happy New Year! 

Ms. Massey